
And That’s It for Google+ - theBashShell
https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/05/and-thats-really-it-for-google/
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blakesterz
I know people love to complain about Google's track record of shutting things
down, but for me this is the one that made me say "I'll never use anything new
from Google for anything important. Never. Anything." The pushed this thing SO
hard for a couple of years, and now it's just gone. I feel like I'd be a fool
to use anything more than search and Gmail at this point. I've heard good
things about GCP but there's no way anyone will convince me that'll be around
in 5 years (though if it is I might be convinced). All those chat/video apps,
no way I'm even going to bother with checking them out. And so on. Google+
seemed like THE most important thing at Google, tied into everything, even
required for a while, and it's gone now, or maybe rebranded into that thing
they just announced earlier this week?

TechCrunch has a nice Google+ timeline:
[https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/08/looking-back-at-
google/](https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/08/looking-back-at-google/)

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ardy42
> The pushed this thing SO hard for a couple of years, and now it's just gone.
> I feel like I'd be a fool to use anything more than search and Gmail at this
> point

Did they ever restore the general + search operator that they killed to
repurpose for Google+?

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dredmorbius
_Did they ever restore the general + search operator_

No.

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yablak
Use double quotes around your search string, it gives the same behavior.

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dredmorbius
Which is to say, "no".

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Aaronstotle
Another Google project left to die, I give Stadia until 2021 before it's part
of the abandoned google graveyard.

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UncleMeat
Google+ has been a wasteland for years. If nobody uses a product, how long
should a company support it? Isn't pivoting considered a good thing?

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erik_seaberg
Not when the result destroys published documents and causes link rot. It would
be much better for the web to leave the system read-only, but Google's eng
culture imposes endless maintenance churn they don't want to pay for.

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cjhanks
It seems like people have forgotten the point of Google+. If I recall
correctly... there were too many disparate login systems which resulted in a
fractured identity. There were various legal and technical reasons which they
could not associate users amongst their different properties.

Then they sent out advertisements to get everyone on G+. And a huge number of
people clicked, without even understand what they were creating. Then all of
the accounts were merged into one, that had different policies.

And so, there was no longer a profit motivation for the product.

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hckr_news
Starting 2013 you couldn’t even comment on YouTube without merging your
YouTube account into Google plus. I eventually gave in.

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ViViDboarder
Anyone know why the page loads fully, including article text, then the text
diss appears and it says there’s an error?

Sometimes I hate the modern web.

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xnx
Was Google+ the largest social network that didn't have advertising? In the
right hands, Google+ could've been a strong ad-free alternative to
Facebook/Instagram and Twitter.

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dredmorbius
Possibly.

Contrast Usenet, IRC, and MetaFilter.

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mikecoles
Google+ was pretty fantastic. The only downside was losing the + operator in
Google search. Then, I also thought Google Wave was a good idea.

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MivLives
Google Wave was a pretty good idea. Apache Wave stuck around for a bit though
I don't know if anyone used it.

A lot of the things in Google Wave filtered out. Real time document
collaboration is fantastic, and I don't think it existed as much in the public
consciousness before Wave.

Google+ had some good ideas. The multiple social circles thing is still the
easiest way I've seen that done. I don't know if facebook has fully copied it
yet or not.

