Since everyone is making the rounds with their final parting words to Google+ which will be joining the rest of the apps and services that Google has thrown in the dumpster without a second thought tomorrow, I figured I’d get things off my chest one last time.
I joined as early as 1 July 2011 having obtained an invitation from someone on Twitter with much buzz and excitement following my first (and likely last) Google I/O in May that same year.
A project not only put together by Google but helmed by none other than +Vic Gundotra whose passion for the project was motivation enough to be part of something which was destined to become huge and groundbreaking, or so we thought.
The truth is, in as much as I was more than happy to dump Facebook and fully embrace G+ (I recall moving all my pictures from over there, none of which had EXIF data, it was painful), hardly anyone else dared do the same. To this day most of them, and more, remain content in the Facebook walled garden and their lies and deception gone by unnoticed or uncared for.
Here was exciting, I could post pictures to their full resolution, write as much as I want, format (up to a point) my text with bold and italics and strikethrough. I could use #hashtags, join hangouts and soon after join and create communities. I could also read what others shared without squinting and getting a headache from the bombardments of ads, because there never were any in here.
Eventually I created my own communities, one of which reaching upwards of 30k members. A few years later when the last of the great innovations was introduced: collections, I could finally organise all my posts into little areas that followers could choose to unsubscribe from and soon via being featured on the recommended page I gathered the largest following I’ve ever had (and likely will never again have). A collection of nearly 200,000 followers. If this were youtube I could consider making a living out of it. But of course it wasn’t, and never had plans to be.
As a product you just knew that G+ had to be subsidised by other money making departments within Google. Sure, now that it’s part of GSuite it’s somewhat funded via those subscriptions but for us, mere “consumers”, it always was a loss-making machine. Thinking about it in economical terms, neither Google nor its users had any mean to profit from G+.
Sure we made connections, albeit virtual ones as far as I’m concerned since I’ve never in my nearly 8 years of presence on G+ met face to face with the myriad of folks I connected with despite living not too far from some. But it became clear after Vic left that the place was held together with heart strings that had become slack and slowly decayed to the point we’re at now, like rubber bands becoming dry and brittle with time.
Despite the last (known) words of Larry Page about the product (“Yes we still love Google+” iirc) no one at Google who had enough clout showed real love for it. Once chatty managers became silent and the onus eventually rested on Community Managers who liked the product but were never given enough incentive to stay for more than a year or two at most, nor enough power to make any meaningful decisions. In the end it felt very much like it was us, the users who kept things going.
Anyone who’s been at G+ long enough knows the whole story about the security risk was either made up or designed specifically to give a public reason to kill it. For me the result of the demise of this place was losing trust in Google altogether, a company I once almost blindedly loved, found excuses for and virulently defended to all the naysayers. But now that the Ghost Town prophecy has been fully realised, that love is now lost, if not forever at least to a point where I no longer hold it above everyone else.
But I’m done being furious at Google for abandoning G+, simply because if anything it proves just how incompetent they are at dealing with people and their complex relationships, interests and desires. Of course they will have to crack that nut if they are to be successful at their endeavours at Artificial Intelligence, but they have a long way to go yet.
(This post was first written on Google+ on Monday 1 April 2019)
You speak for many on G+, Jean-Loup! You can see what many G+ refugees are saying about their situation on https://gplusmigration.blogspot.com/ I have reproduced your comments there and invited you on as a guest poster.
I have enjoyed your photos and posts, Jean-Loup. Sorry to see G+ go. I don’t really care for facebook. Maybe something else will come along. The standard in the computer world seems to be change for the sake of change.