I believe Google+ failed simply because it was Google. Had it had any kind of a human, friendly, or small startup, perhaps people might have given it a try.<p>People don't want Google integrated with their YouTube account, coupled with their Facebook pages, coupled with their email, coupled with their contacts, and on-and on it goes with Google. No respect for separation of the information.<p>I darned sure didn't like it when Google took over my YouTube experience. Now I have pray that I don't accidentally access a sexy YouTube video with the computer logged into my wife's account. Now, all of my previous viewing will be highlighter all over her YouTube page the next time she logs in.<p>These guys are really stupid in trying to unify every internet experience we have all into one nosy mother-in-law. It's the essence of evil they promised not to become a part of.
I honestly think that some areas of social networking phenomena are dying and Google+ came on board at the beginning of the end. From my observation, Facebook is dying a slow death. I see most of my Facebook "friends" aren't posting anything anymore and just browse. Some only post check-ins when they travel, otherwise everything is deadly silent. I have my Facebook disabled most of the time, but every once in a while i login to see what's going on with some folks across the pond and all I see is everyone reposting news. Facebook has become a boring place to read quirky news and get on with the rest of your day. And when discussing this with some friends who were at some point active on Facebook I consistently get the same "there is nothing going on it" response. I can't imagine that this will continue for much longer.<p>Frankly, another big reason G+ failed is because most people using Facebook didn't need anything else. Google essentially tried to fix a problem that wasn't even a problem. Yes, Facebookers complained about privacy concerns, but those who did were likely not even 2% of the entire user base.
Google lost the plot with G+. The reason that Google is where it is is because it made things people wanted to use, they <i>naturally</i> came to use these things.<p>Around this time Google just simply <i>forgot</i> this, killed reader, killed ig, killed labs, and then tried to herd people into using an inferior social network, then tried to shove all of google's other products into this terrible product nobody wanted to use.<p>This is different than what happened during the search engine wars, where google's product was simply <i>better</i> than all the others and that's why people used it.
I think where G+ really missed a trick was in not publishing a write-API. They were clearly trying to force people away from FB, but an open API would have allowed for a smoother migration over time. Without automation, most people simply couldn't be bothered to post the same thing twice. Third-party twitter clients, which were being shafted around the same time, would have jumped on it.<p>This mistake, coupled with a double-edged focus on privacy (as people shared with less friends, others wouldn't see much content) and their disastrous Real Name idiocy, was their undoing - G+ became a me-too.
Lots of people throw out technical or social reasons for G+ failing, but I'd point to the factor that tends to be one of the most important make-it-or-break-it variables for any new venture's success (according to Bill Gross[1] anyway): timing.<p>If G+ had been released pre-Facebook (or at least earlier in Facebook's history) I doubt any of those technical points would have been show stoppers. G+ has/had a lot of little advantages over competitors, but none large enough to bring about the mass migration that G+ so desperately needed. With <i>good</i> timing, none of the little annoyances or problems with G+ would have likely mattered. Good product; unfortunate timing - at least with respect to the fundamental product being offered.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gross_the_single_biggest_reason_why_startups_succeed/transcript?language=en" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gross_the_single_biggest_reaso...</a>
Hindsight is 20-20, of course. But in this case, <i>foresight</i> was 20-20: G+ has failed in almost exactly the way that I (and everybody I was talking to at the time) expected it to. For me, the saddest thing about G+'s failure has been its plodding inevitability.<p>It would be really interesting to see a more in-depth analysis of how this happened. It didn't happen because the folks at Google are stupid: from top to bottom, they are wicked smart. So how did such a mass delusion take hold? I'd be genuinely interested in hearing from people who expected G+ to succeed, and <i>why</i> they had this expectation, and how its failure has changed their perceptions.
What killed G+ for me was how hard they made it to actually read anything. Originally it was okay, but as time progressed they favoured images over text, and then kept spreading text out further and further apart. I took a screenshot at one point where I highlighted in yellow the actual readable content, making up a tiny proportion of the page: <a href="http://i.imgur.com/d8qwVpc.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/d8qwVpc.png</a><p>Of course they had years of experience in helping people read content with Google Reader, so that had to be shut down and lessons ignored. Then they made sure there was no API, or even RSS feeds, so no one else could make a more efficient reader either.<p>Or in other words, did anyone at Google actually try using their product? (I seem to say that a lot about different Google products.)
I think where Google could build momentum is to try to go for a <i>private</i> ecosystem where everything you store (photos, notes, etc.) would be private. The facebook opposite.<p>That would be a solid alternative to Apple's ecosystem and you would see the benefits of going from Facebook to Google.<p>Google has a much better chance of competing against Apple's photo/notes/cloud services than it would beating Facebook. Also I believe there is going to be a tendency in the next few years to move out of Facebook because of the social network effect people want to get out of.<p>Google would be the only solid candidate for anyone not wanting to jump into Apple's products.
I've never seen this mentioned so I'm doing to mention it. I suspect Google+, and the cannibalizing of other projects, was directed by Page. He became CEO in April 2011. G+ launched in late June 2011. April-May-June is about 90 days. From the article:<p>> The massive Google+ launch effort had all the hallmarks of a technology corporation: a code name ("Emerald Sea"), <i></i>an artificial timeline (100 days to launch!)<i></i>, a dedicated secret building (<i></i>with the CEO relocated there<i></i>) and a full PR blitz once completed.<p>The CEO puts his office in the G+ building. I see that as Page being the driving force behind this. The article says:<p>> "Vic was just this constant bug in Larry's ear: 'Facebook is going to kill us. Facebook is going to kill us,'" says a former Google executive. "I am pretty sure Vic managed to frighten Larry into action. And voila: Google+ was born."<p>But for what actually happened to have happened, Page had to have bought into the idea independently (assuming he is independent). Every article I've seen about G+'s failure fails to mention anything about Page's role - this article goes <i>out of its way</i> in this strange way to try to say Page was just 'whispered to too much'.<p>> By early 2014, less than three years after its big launch, the Google+ team had moved out of its coveted building to a spot on campus further from Page. Gundotra announced his departure from the company that April — in a Google+ post, of course — to pursue "a new journey."<p>The G+ push/force was still in full-swing on the consumer side through 2014. Evidence that Page was the driving force, not Vic.<p>This was an organization-centric article, but I wish it had mentioned the other potential causes for G+'s failure, such as being invite-only during the media attention, and the rude forcing of people over from other platforms (Reader, YouTube, Maps, business listings, etc).
I think there is a very simple reason why this did not take off: google is not in it for the long haul on social projects (see 'orkut') so why invest in their platform?<p>As long as a company pulls the plug on projects that involve user investment with some regularity there is little chance that they'll be able to launch a social platform requiring significant investment from the audience they seek. You can kill only so many projects before people will become wary of trying out your next project, no matter how hard you try to force it on them. In fact, forcing it on them reeks of desperation and that is another nail in the coffin.<p>Technology and the real-names fiasco were for sure factors but I just don't see google 'getting' social.
You could tell right away that Google didn't have a clear vision for how people would use the service. They could have differentiated from Facebook with an emphasis on privacy or decent features. Instead of a social experience where people could interact with each other, you got something that was you could post something on your profile and people could comment on it. There was nothing special about the experience.<p>I've seen this multiple times when interacting with Google employees, just a sense of removal from the real world that permeates some of their choices. Stuff like, "oh, I guess the page on accessibility should be accessible."
Puns aside... you can'd do social without having some kind of <i>face</i>.<p>Facebook really has <i>face(s)</i> (puns aside again): it has Mark Z's friendly looking <i>face</i>, it has the <i>faces</i> of all your friends and family that are already there, it has a warm-looking humane-looking brand (not with a damn mathematical sign like "+" <i>in. its. freaking. name.</i>), even the annoying-to-most-geeks UX has a "face" that you can recognize. Even when they do their ubercreepy stuff we all complain about, they do it with a <i>face</i>, you viscerally hate it or you get freaked out just like you would get freaked out by a stalker watching you naked... you don't just feel like your privacy is invaded by a mathematical equation. Facebook, the company, really feels like a "person" and not a "thing". (Yeah, to me at least it feels like an ubercreepy person for whom I want a restraining order and maybe a vicious guard dog too and few extra alarm systems to keep it as far away as possible... but it's still a "person"). And it's not a reaction, Facebook wan't born out of a reaction to MySpace, it "authentic" and people can feel this about a brand. That's why corporations can spend millions on buying a brand that "feels authentic" instead of "manufacturing a brand".<p>Facebook started with a bunch of cool faces and a cool story. They even made a movie out of that story! And a totally shitty technical platform, but that didn't matter. The gargantuan effort to make Google+ succeed looked like some folks' effort to make Esperanto into the de-facto international language instead of English. <i>You needed the literary face of a Shakespeare, and the military face of a British Empire to make a language succeed, an beneath them an authentic foundation (English was not invented as a reaction to Latin!).</i>
When G+ launched people were primed to move away from Facebook. When people saw that G+ was both twitter and facebook in a single package they were wowed.<p>G+ was ready to succeed big.<p>RealNames killed G+, the most transparently Moronic decision of the last decade or so in tech
> Google ripped out its elaborate internal video conferencing system and forced employees to use the Google+ Hangouts video chat feature in Plus, which one employee described as "janky."<p>This is still the worst fallout for me. Whenever I need to do a video call with someone it involves lots of hair pulling trying to get everyone to press weird "say hi" buttons on profiles before it will ever even manage to show messages between each other, let alone video conference. Half the time it doesn't and we all just use Skype which is reliable. Google Talk was actually good, Google Hangouts is just broken and killed it for an inferior product.
> The belief was that we were always just one weird feature away from the thing taking off<p>This is a constant in every struggling project / startup.
I never understood why Google tried to create a "closed social network inside the web", when Google (almost) is the web.<p>The technology behind Google+ seems nice tho ( so was Wave ), very snappy but that is probably because of lack of users. I like some of the communities there, but it seems to die slowly.<p>At the same time, a lot of people never gave G+ a chance, because they felt Google already had too much power. It felt like giving Google the "missing link". At least, that is my experience.
I can't help myself, but since Google+ I feel like Google lost its way - forcing us by nagging to accept various unpleasant and not very well thought out ways to use their services while seeing their search quality deteriorating (feels to me like Altavista now, XX search result pages clicked through and still being unable to find relevant stuff way too often). I am really worried about their future now and hope they won't end up as SUN...
> "Vic was just this constant bug in Larry's ear: 'Facebook is going to kill us. Facebook is going to kill us,'" says a former Google executive.<p>He could also have said: "Apple is going to block ads in their new version of Safari. Soon they will introduce iPhone native search, and nobody will ever see Google again."
One aspect of Google+ that always grated on me was that the name was terrible branding. I don't know if I'm in the minority for feeling this way, but with with all their other services that one gets tied up with, you don't want a 'plus' you want to think about the social aspect as a compartmentalized, separate section. They'd have been much better off calling it something else, or at least trying to be a lot quieter about tying all of it together.<p>I am sure the social media trend numbers looked great on paper, but they severely underestimated how tired people would get with it. (I'd say only a small fraction of my facebook friends still are active there, for instance.)<p>Anyhow, my troubles with the G+ branding may sound like a nitpick, but I think it was a lot of the problem. People already had privacy concerns about Google, now they could have privacy concerns+.
Sure Google made some mistakes with Google+ but it is a success as far as I am concerned. I use Google+ about an hour a week, Twitter about 20 minutes a week, and Facebook about 15 minutes a week.<p>If Google+ has a few hundred million regular users, that sounds good. Why the need to comptere with Facebook on numbers?
The article touched on this briefly, but my personal opinion about why Google+ failed is because it isn't needed. People who have spent hundreds of hours cultivating their Facebook profiles, building out their networks, etc. had zero reason to switch. Any time I asked a friend to join Google+ the answer was always "Why? Facebook works fine." While people in the tech echo chamber are always searching for new products and new ways to use online services, the vast majority of people simply don't care. Honestly, G+ could have been the best platform in the world and I doubt people would have switched only because what they had already worked.
G+ tried to be too much like facebook social netwrok. Instead it should be like topic related like reddit more dicussions rather then memes. I do liek the communities and collections feature. The Android app is also very well designed.
Google+ missed the chance to become an introvert-style social network. Facebook with its 'Like' buttons and tendency to self-exposure is clearly targeted at extroverts. Google+ could've made its bet on introverts.
Google plus has one terrific feature: it's a safe choice for both websites and users as an oauth login. Most people have an account, but nobody uses it as a social network (unless you know a lot of Google employees).
As a social network it has failed , But as an Identify Platform it's really good . My g+ profile while doesn't have many posts like facebook/twitter or instagram but has the most data ,my search history,my app downloads,youtube browse history, knows my phone ,my number ,All the places I have lived ,places I have worked . If I log on a new device with my gmail/g+ all over sudden I have all this data working to make my surfing better.<p>Now if only they used that data to make a better Google plus feed ,It's the feed that died.
There's no Google+ landing page.<p>If you want to participate and create a g+-account you'll automatically sign up for google search, gmail, google drive, youtube, google maps, play store, google maps with no option to opt out.<p>Now who thought this was a good idea?<p>But even if someone wanted all that, if you signed up for your business to have a youtube channel and a g+ page, you don't get your custom vanity URLs with the chosen account-name. That's remarkably bad UX.
Facebook's killer feature, the one everyone uses, is messenger. The timeline is dead, none of my friends really post much anymore, the primary reason people I know still use it is because of the ubiquitous messenger presence. If google went after that with a messenger focused network I think they would have had a great chance at taking over Facebook.
> As Google stumbled and failed and stumbled again, Facebook grew larger and more influential.<p>This just tells me the market is not open, and allows for no competition.
Google+ did not make big mistakes. For example, their mobile experience is much better. People just didn't want to leave the social network most of their friends are on already. Same with Ello. People are lazy. But Google+ pressed Facebook to innovate. We won, Google lost.
Didn't Google learn from Buzz that the world didn't want another social network of the kind that already existed? I guess not.<p>Google's just amazing at building technology no one wants/needs. Wave, Buzz, G+, are all great examples of that. If only they could hire someone like me (and many others with common sense in this area, I'm far from special in this regard) who would have told them even before release the G+ would have been a failure. And Buzz and Wave and probably a whole bunch of other great technology that ended up being useless.
G+ could be more popular if Google knew how to launch products - not tech demos. They launched the thing and made it invite only, when people were eager to try it out. I don't know who had this clever idea, maybe they thought they could repeat the Gmail launch or FB exclusivity.
Facebook succeeded in a crowded space, full of mediocre but wealthy competition, because of where it started. It began at Harvard, moved out to the Ivies, then the top 100 universities, then all universities, then everyone. By this point, it had iterated its way out of the technical failings of the initial product (except for the use of PHP, which still hasn't been entirely undone).<p>Google+, when it started, was superior in almost every way to Facebook in its first few years. (That's not a fair comparison. Facebook was a startup social network; Google+ came out of the gate at 120 mph.) It had Hangouts, which would have been a killer app if people had actually used them as a sharable social space (i.e. to "hang out") as the execs thought they would. The problem was that Google thought its muscle would allow it to take a greatest-fixed-point approach (i.e. a "stay popular once popular" strategy) whereas any social network needs to focus on the <i>least</i> fixed point, because that's where it's going to land. It had wealth but no users and no credibility, and it wasn't able to get those.<p>Hangouts are genuinely useful and there was some guy at Google who argued that courting independent game developers (and getting high quality products, rather than third-string products and Zyngarbage from mainstream publishers who expected Google+ to fail and weren't going to use their best stuff) would have allowed Google+ to grow organically and inductively, with the same "cognitively upscale" initial user base that made Facebook, thus proving Hangouts and moving to progressively larger subsets of the population. It became obvious that the failure of Google Games (and, possibly, of Google+ in its entirety) came from Google's leadership not listening to him. I wonder whatever happened to that guy.