

Google+ Isn’t Going Away - nickbilton
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/google-isnt-going-anywhere/
Proclaiming that Google+ won’t survive is like saying that the Apple iOS will die, but the iPhone and iPad will live on. They are one and the same, just as Google and Google+ will be.
======
timr
_"Instead, Google+ is a social layer that has always been intended to sit on
top of the company’s flagship product: search."_

Flash back to an anonymous Stanford office, circa 1996, where two ambitious
graduate students are sitting in front of a pile of lego servers:

Larry: "Hey Sergey...you know what the world needs? A place where people can
share cat photos with their friends."

Sergey: "Oh, Larry...how many times have I dreamed of such a thing!?!?
But...how will we get people to join our site if nobody is already sharing cat
photos?"

Larry: (thinks for a moment) "I've got it, Sergey! We'll create a _search
engine!_ Once we gain market dominance, we can use our captive audience to
build our social network!"

Sergey: "Brilliant! They'll never see it coming!"

...

~~~
joebadmo
It seems clear to me that the author meant "always" wrt the inception of G+,
not the inception of search. So your snark, while amusing, is misplaced.

~~~
ellyagg
That would seem to be true, as thinking otherwise is quite foolish of course.
However, the very next paragraph is:

"Sure, Google hopes to build a social network that competes with Facebook,
Twitter and other social services, but that is not the main reason the company
has put so many resources behind Google+. Instead, Google+ is a social layer
that has always been intended to sit on top of the company’s flagship product:
search."

What? "Google+ is a social layer that has always been intended to sit on top
of the company's flagship product: search" just exactly as long as they
decided to "build a social network that competes with Facebook, Twitter and
other social services". He is somehow trying to sleight-of-hand away the
causal relationship here. If Google+ fails to rival Facebook and Twitter as a
social network, it might still turn out ok somehow, but it will doubtlessly be
considered a failure internally and externally.

------
Jd
This is a bit far afield. The most likely prospect for G+ is that it becomes a
social network for the more technically inclined while Facebook remains the
social network for all -- a bit like the differentiation between reddit and
digg. The main reason is not something great that Google is doing, however,
but the immense dislike that many have for Facebook. Facebook, of course, is
sucking in all data it can get access to regardless of whether it has any
legitimate reason to take that data and, despite willful violation of data
protection laws, is likely to remain above the law like many other protected
parties.

I think the long term hope is that Google+ might become something like Gmail
is to Outlook. G+ is the innovative, feature-driven, technologically saavy
option, whereas even if more people use the "Outlook" option today, because of
the technological advances attached to the "Gmail" option, people will
transition to it over time.

That said, I think that is the best possible option and I don't have any
reason to think that G+ is really delivering in any meaningful way on these
hopes. Let's see if they actually can stay one technological step ahead of
Facebook. Some better APIs would be nice...

~~~
joebadmo
The problem with your assertion is that a lot of technically inclined people
know a lot of other people and want to interact with them socially. It's
Facebook's most powerful and most difficult to overcome feature: all your
friends are already on it.

To me, the only truly viable way for Google to combat that is to create a
truly open, federated collection of social networks that can interoperate, by
releasing the underlying code to G+ the way they did with Wave, or the way
email works.

It would enable Diaspora, identica, etc. to become full-fledged social
networks, and all still be viable because they could talk to each other, as
well as talk to G+. Don't trust Google or any other company? Host your own
Plus server. Companies could host their own internal Plus platforms.

I can't imagine that Google can fight the closed platform of Facebook with
another closed platform, and the open web has always been its symbiotic ally.

~~~
Jd
Generally speaking I agree, but Google screwed up Wave so badly that the lead
developer went to work for Facebook; any developer that was in the community
or building products for Wave was also so badly screwed I think they'll never
work with or for Google again (Full disclosure: I was among them).

I think this needs a new company. Anyone interested?

~~~
joebadmo
That's fair, but I don't know who has the intersection of Google's clout and
incentives. Google's the only powerful force that has the incentive to fight
for an open web, as opposed to a collection of closed silos.

My not-so-secret hope is that the lesson Google took from the Wave debacle was
to first focus on making a product that's compelling and engaging to users,
get a critical mass of adoption, and _then_ release the code. I guy can dream,
can't he?

~~~
Jd
It is ultimately not about clout and incentives; it is about drive. It is just
like when a lot of people know what the right thing is to do but are too short
sighted to pursue it (wasn't Google just trying to acquire Zynga, for
example).

~~~
joebadmo
Google also seems like one of the most long-term thinking companies in
existence. Self-driving cars come to mind.

------
joebadmo
I really like G+, but I'm a bit dismayed that they seem to be addressing the
concerns of brands over those of users.

The nymwars was a prominent example, of course, and even the resulting promise
of pseudonymity features have yet to surface, while Pages for brands are now
live.

The lack of an outward facing platform of APIs is also concerning. I continue
to hope that the Plus project is the beginning of a way to implement social
features into the web itself. I hope that Google doesn't forget that as the
web gets better, Google gets better, and as people use the web more, people
use Google more.

~~~
tommi
Give it some time. Likely Pages is dead simple to implement compared to
pseudonymity. Possibly it was made by "secondary" team while the main tackles
the pseudonymity.

G+ has not been live that long. Let it grow and evolve.

~~~
joebadmo
Maybe you're right. But it's not just Pages. It's also stuff like Ripples, +1
integration with web sites, badgets, etc. These rollouts all seem to point to
a prioritization of brands over users.

I'm still hopeful, though.

~~~
bad_user
I'm just a regular user, not a _business_ per se.

But I like what they are doing with the +1 button, or with the customized
search results. I think it's pretty cool experimenting with my own blog /
trying to stand out in the search results and it's also pretty cool seeing
your face in that list :) -- not that I want to earn any money from it or
whatever.

Google's direction is pretty clear to me. They are giving people the tools to
promote themselves online. This is not necessarily a bad thing, although the
nymwars left a bad taste in my mouth that I hope they'll rectify.

~~~
joebadmo
I think that makes you not really a regular user. Don't get me wrong, I think
it's fine that Google is providing tools for self-promotion and features for
brands. But it seems to me that the best feature for brands is a lot of
engaged users.

The reason Google search ads have a stranglehold on the market is because they
have so much search marketshare. Similarly, it seems to me that the best thing
to do would be to aggressively provide _users_ with the best experience
possible. The brands will follow, regardless of how good their tools are.

------
badclient
Google+ as a competitor to facebook _is_ dead.

Now, you can come up with all the creative ideas in the world about how G+ is
not supposed to be a facebook killer. I believe that is a cop out.

Google really wants to kill facebook and hoped to make a dent with G+. Why is
it hard to acknowledge that they haven't made any noticeable dent? And that
for the most part, facebook was very quick to address the granular privacy
features that made G+ somewhat interesting.

 _You can already see how Google+ is being integrated into the company’s
entire product line. The +1 button is visible on every YouTube video and
search results page, and it is even on single images from the site’s visual
search. Earlier this week, Google began offering Google+ pages for businesses,
too._

Very classic error: assuming development/integration equal traction. Yes,
google can slap +1 button on every darn page. And of course a bunch of people
might click on it. The billion dollar question is what longterm benefit does
G+ deliver to its users? Is there any? Engagement metrics usually answer this
question. But Google won't release engagement metrics. Guess away as to why...

~~~
bitskits
I respectfully disagree. Was your expectation that G+'s user-base would
eclipse FB after 5 months? I don't think that's realistic (really going out on
a limb here). By that metric you could have said the same thing about FB in
the early days when MySpace had all the users. Clearly, over time, people
moved to the better product.

If you want to comment on the rate of adoption, that's one thing, but lets
compare apples to apples.

~~~
badclient
I don't care about the user-base numbers. All I care about is engagement.
Facebook had crazy engagement even when they had 1000 members. When they had
10M, over 50% of the users were logging in daily. Google now has 40M users and
yet they refuse to release engagement numbers.

~~~
robryan
Facebook had great engagement early on because all the early users were in the
same social circles. Wouldn't surprise me at all that 1000 users at the same
college as me would result in more usage as opposed to 40 million users
scattered across the world.

~~~
badclient
I chalk that up as a deadly blunder on Google's part.

No one forced google to just open up G+ to the entire world. I feel they
botched the launch of G+ by allowing scattered masses to join instead of
totally nailing smaller groups like how Facebook did.

~~~
robryan
I think they nailed a single group, the already fairly well connected tech and
startups people. This also dragged along those interested in these people
although they get less value from it as it's more of a Twitter like following
medium unless lots of people are putting you in their circles.

Google certainly have the resources to nail more smaller groups, it's just not
the way they operate as this doesn't scale well.

~~~
badclient
I disagree that they have nailed _any_ group. For me, nailing a group would
mean that group ditching their competitor. Yet, I can't name a single Valley
friend of hundreds who has ditched facebook for Google+. Now, I can name you
dozens who have a G+ account and have tinkered with it. But that is hardly
"nailing" it.

I think you actually nailed it: google doesn't know how to scale social
because social doesn't scale the same way as most other products. Facebook
scaled growth in a very methodical manner from university to university and
later country to country.

~~~
mayanksinghal
Actually, Google+ is doing fairly well among bloggers, especially tech
bloggers. Some references: [1] [2].

Also, success of a product does not mean ditching competitors (although one of
the report does even suggest that!), it means gaining sufficient acceptance
initially, so that later it becomes a valid option to ditch competitors.

For example: I was an Orkut user (was not happy with it) for quite a long time
(1 year or so), even after joining facebook. Not because Facebook was not good
or successful but because there was already some engagement at Orkut that
cannot be replaced in a jiffy.

[1] [http://www.blogworld.com/2011/07/13/prominent-tech-
bloggers-...](http://www.blogworld.com/2011/07/13/prominent-tech-bloggers-
point-domain-names-to-google-plus-streams/)

[2]
[https://plus.google.com/113117251731252114390/posts/3wfvDJEi...](https://plus.google.com/113117251731252114390/posts/3wfvDJEiJXq)

~~~
badclient
_Actually, Google+ is doing fairly well among bloggers, especially tech
bloggers. Some references: [1] [2]._

Sorry, tech _bloggers_ is a vastly different segment than tech users. Neither
are optimal groups to target if you want to build a mainstream social network.

------
andrewla
The article is ridiculous on the face of it. "Proclaiming that Google+ won’t
survive is like saying that the Apple mobile iOS operating system will die,
but the iPhone and iPad will live on" -- a better analogy is "Proclaiming that
Google+ won’t survive is like saying that MacOS will die, but the Mac will
live on". Except that this _did_ happen.

If Google+ fails, Google can let it die, and slowly remove all the places
where it has intruded into search. Or Google+ can fail, and Google can decide
to drag the whole company down with it, by trading all of their goodwill and
usefulness to drive people to their social network. But claiming that they are
forced to do the latter is stupid.

------
Aloisius
If this was Microsoft, I'd fully expect them to keep hammering away for years
and dump as much money as it took for them to own the market, but Google has
institutional ADHD.

If they don't outright kill it after three years of it not making them any
serious money, I fully expect them to abandon it with only minor updates for
some other shiny and new product.

------
mtkd
It does seem to have slow uptake, but it has a long-game feel to it - doing it
right slowly is probably the right move.

They should just buy Twitter and merge it in by allowing aliases.

I'm really warming to Google - very impressed with the way they've re-skinned
and consolidated their product set - it feels like they've crossed a bridge
that Microsoft couldn't.

~~~
luriel
> I'm really warming to Google - very impressed with the way they've re-
> skinned and consolidated their product set - it feels like they've crossed a
> bridge that Microsoft couldn't.

Google Apps users still feel second-class, but seems that at long lasts, after
years of failed promises they are getting around to fixing this.

------
notatoad
it's my understanding that google+ does not need to be a breakout social media
phenomenon to be successful. google already has a ton of very successful
social products, the + initiative is gradually integrating those product's
social features under a common interface.

picasaweb, for example, is a huge photo sharing network with tons of users.
blogger is a huge social network with tons of users. youtube is a huge video
sharing network with tons of users. google already has those users. that's the
core of their social business. just because people aren't writing public
'wall' posts, doesn't mean g+ is dead. despite how similar it looks to
facebook on the surface, the core of google's social business is very much not
facebook.

------
gordonc
I am hanging out on a team product meeting with peeps in Paris, Philly, NYC,
and SF as I type this.

For me, this makes G+ 100x more valuable than FB.

~~~
mpclark
Exactly! Google+ is brilliant for business use. I'm sharing stuff with
colleagues far more effectively (and selectively) now.

~~~
fypomg
It's not just business use alone that matters for Google, they are a complete
productivity/life suite. Facebook fails miserably at this.

Enter the realm of Facebook and what do you accomplish, you add friends, like
something, and look at photos, essentially nothing, a closed experience that
ignores much of the internet as a whole delivered through an unusable
interface (does anyone else feels like facebook has a b-rated windows 95 feel
to it?). Seriously, try to find apps in Facebook vs. finding apps in Chrome
Web Store. I understand the numbers behind it, but AOL was cool at one time
too.

Google you have everything you need to help you be productive and useful.
Amazing integration across all platforms, mobile phones, google docs, chat,
news, reader(quit whining about the redesign) and discovery (google +,
seriously video chat in hangouts thats pretty and easy to use, why do I need
Citrix?). If your against the thought that google + can be successful and aide
you in having a better social user experience online, then I'll let you get
back your USWeekly and you can keep joining your "Kim Kardashian Support"
groups on Facebook.

Google is the company that Microsoft failed(fails?) to be. Sure they don't
make pretty iphones, but they make real, usable products.

~~~
spullara
This is a pretty good assessment. I could see G+ gaining traction as a work
network a la yammer but that probably isn't a big enough prize for Google to
bet the company on.

------
mikeryan
I've found its starting to get hard to analyze some Google products and their
likelihood of survival when it comes to Google. In my case its when I get
questions about the GoogleTV. If it were any other company I'd say "yeah that
product is dead" but its not any company. Its Google, who has 40B dollars in
cash reserves. They have an unprecedented ability to continue to develop
products which are "flops" if they continue to see a strategic advantage to
being involved in the space. With the amount of financial runway, and human
intelligence Google can provide to a product - its hard to see _any_ of them
continuing to fail indefinitely.

~~~
marshray
WP7.

------
betterlabs
I already discover most new content via Facebook and the only missing piece is
search. If Facebook builds a search engine and integrates within its core
experience sooner than Google takes to get G+ to work and scale, it would be a
good indication of who might eventually win. From the social perspective,
Facebook already has the mental association at a massive scale that may be
tough for G+ to get to, especially considering Google is perceived to be "more
utility than fun" across its user base.

------
akkartik
Can we switch this to the original title? 'going anywhere' could refer to a
dead end or perseverance.

~~~
ot
They must have changed the title after publication, both the URL and some in-
page links still say "anywhere".

~~~
akkartik
Ah.

------
Jwsonic
I think the integration of G+ in the core of Android will do wonders for its
adoption. Suddenly the millions of users with Android devices have an
incentive to begin using G+.

------
dylangs1030
I don't think Google+ should be trying to compete with Facebook and Twitter in
the traditional sense of the word. Just because a website fits into a niche of
companies under the broad heading, "Social Network" doesn't mean that it has
the same intentions as its other incumbents. Facebook more or less eradicated
MySpace because it was a case of two websites being too similar in function,
and Facebook was simply superior. Twitter and Facebook coexist without one or
the other being eliminated because they don't directly compete - Twitter is
useful for different functions that Facebook doesn't accomplish; but neither
does Facebook or Twitter _try_ to accomplish the other's specialties. While I
agree that some competition is needed to expand user base and continually
maintain attractive and trending features, it would be better for the social
networks to specialize. A website like Facebook could never defeat Facebook -
it has a de facto monopoly on vicarious, virtual socializing.

That said, you don't really go on Facebook to announce something to the world
unless you have a really popular "Page" (as opposed to profile). You sign up
for Twitter and tell your followers what the update is. It's much more
professional for a working environment. Facebook is personal. I feel Google+
fits somewhere in between these two dichotomies right now, which is why it
feels somewhat awkward for a lot of users. But I think it's still a very good
network that has potential to specialize into something neither Facebook or
Twitter quite accomplish yet. If it can create its own niche within a niche,
competition won't be as important as maintaining its own superlative market
share for specialized functioning. Otherwise, it will die out, because
directly competing with Facebook will _not_ work at this point in time.

------
chintan
"Google+ is Google"

So it might not be far fetched to think that they might start requiring (or
implicitly nudging) you to sign-in to G+ to use their Search.

~~~
vidarh
By logging in, your search results leverage your profile information and
connections. I guess a pretty strong "nudge" would simply be to aggressive
promote that when you're not logged in.

------
mittermayr
Not to hijack this thread, but no wonder Google+ isn't going away when they
invite your work contacts and everyone else without warning you first. See
this thread on HN: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3219443>

------
xelipe
Whether G+ is dead or not, or if it will be killed as a product in 1 year or 5
is not entirely clear. What is sure is that Google is adding social to all of
their products in the form of +1 buttons. So even if G+ is shut down like
Google Buzz, Google is betting on social.

------
bradgessler
I'll be happy with Google+ if it better connects all of the various apps in
the Google eco-system like GMail, Apps, etc.

Right now its such a pain to invite people via email addresses in Google Docs
and Calendar. I should just be able to type in peoples' names and it just
works.

~~~
jamesgeck0
If the people you want to invite are in your Gmail address book, it already
works like this.

------
botker
In terms of the average quality of their content, G+ : FB :: HN : /. That's
just my experience, and YMMV, but if it's globally true then I expect G+ to
win in the long run.

------
jsz0
It looks to me that Google+ is more of a replacement for Blogger than a
competitor to FaceBook at this point.

------
tyohn
This may seem a little out there but maybe Google should buy MySpace and
incorporate it into G+?

------
ed209
I didn't start using twitter until tweetdeck came along.

Google need to work on the API.

------
jsavimbi
> a social network for the more technically inclined

I wouldn't be making many bets on that premise. It's a clearly defined
reaction to Facebook designed and built by engineers lacking the empathy gene.
Facebook defines relationships and has impact beyond what the user reads on
the screen. G+ has none of that and is already being abandoned by early
adopters.

------
yanw
The NYT should install some +1 buttons.

------
xyzzyz
I like to fuck guys.

------
andrewfurman
I know google won't kill it for a long time, but in most ways it is going away
since no one is using it. Then hopefully one day they'll finally admit failure
and it will go the way of google buzz.

After listening to the zuck talk about facebook as a platform and the owner of
the graph, I'm developing this scary feeling that it is going to be imposible
for anyone else to break into that space.

