The Coming Death of Google+
Caid Christiansen•If you were to ask Google their thoughts on their recent announcement about Google+, they’d tell you that no, Google+ isn’t going away. In fact, Bradley Horowitz, Google’s VP of streams, photos, and sharing, all but confirmed that sentiment with a recent statement. In his thoughts on the new change, Horowitz called this move a “pivot.”
But if you ask us? This is the beginning of the end of Google+.
Of course, we can’t predict the future. But when you combine widespread user dissatisfaction about the social network with Google’s recent news, the coming death of Google+ seems to be the writing on the wall.
After making clear back in May that breaking up Google+ was on the search giant’s radar, Google announced just a few days ago the first in what we expect to be a long line of changes to everyone’s least favorite social media platform: your Google+ profile will no longer be your identity in all Google products.
Horowitz had more to say about the change: “We’ve also heard that it doesn’t make sense for your Google+ profile to be your identity in all the other Google products you use.” In the words of VentureBeat: no shit.
Until now—many of the changes won’t go into effect for at least a couple weeks, actually—Google required you to create a Google+ profile to create a YouTube channel and use other functions integrated into Google’s offerings. Many people voiced their concern with this change, and there’s no telling how many users Google drove away by forcing signups. That may have seemed like a good idea, but users quickly grew disillusioned with Google+.
YouTube will be the first product to disassociate with Google+, but Google says this shift in focus will roll out over “the coming months.” The comments you make on YouTube will no longer appear on Google+, and vice versa. Aside from that, “many more [changes],” says Horowitz, “will roll out over the rest of the year.”
What will those changes be? That’s hard to say. But we expect that many Google users will be pleased with these changes set to occur over the next few months. The comment sections of other articles on this news confirm—anecdotally, at least—that initial suspicion.
Google+ had some interesting features, but feedback on the platform has been mixed since the beginning. Even though it seemed to have been useful a direct link into Google’s search platform, forcing users to do anything doesn’t often go well. Even if Google+ was a useful, functional platform (it was in some ways), forced integration is a good way to get immediate backlash.
We don’t think this is just a “pivot,” despite what Horowitz continues to affirm. To us, this seems to be a sign that Google is finally realizing that not that many people actually want to use Google+, even though many have indeed registered.
We’ll be quite interested to see how this pans out over the next few months. For now, though? We’re not surprised. You certainly wouldn’t hear us complaining if Google+ were to slowly fade out of our memory.
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