Currents: Have Meaningful Discussions at Work

Is work really the place for &quot;meaningful discussions&quot;?<p>To me, meaningful discussions is talking about philosophy, religion, political theory, introspecting the roots of one&#x27;s own psychology, etc. That&#x27;s not really what work is for. At work, one needs to focus one&#x27;s discussions on the job – of course, you can talk about outside work stuff, but I&#x27;m always careful to try to keep it shallow and non-controversial. I&#x27;m not about to start debating the existence of God with my work colleagues, as much as I really love that particular debate. Nor am I going to drill into the impact my parent&#x27;s divorce had on my own psychological development.

Does anyone have a sense of what problem Google is solving with Currents?<p>The site copy includes these value props:<p><pre><code> Core: Engage employees. Have meaningful discussions. Stay current — together. - Share ideas with employees and gather input through meaningful, focused discussions on topics that matter to your organization. - Find previously siloed content and resources that are relevant to your work with customized help from Currents. - Discuss key topics with employees across your organization through posts and comments that stay accessible on Currents so you can refer back to them over time. - See the most important content first, using Current’s home stream, which is ranked by relevance for each user. Follow tags on topics, search for specific information, and find what interests you. - Manage and moderate content faster with help from Currents. Key metrics help admins and users measure engagement and find valuable insights. </code></pre> Adopting new tools&#x2F;products within a company is no small feat and nothing here seems like it&#x27;d move the needle for my business.<p>What am I missing?

In an email to GSuite admins, Google said that Google+ is to be replaced by Currents.<p>I was under the belief Google+ is dead. What is happening?<p>Also, if you roll into currents you can&#x27;t roll out.

Google seems so unimpressive for the past 5+ years. It seems they accept that at their core, they&#x27;re just a tech marketing and advertising firm.<p>Not aware of anything exciting from Alphabet altogether, in fact.

That logo reminds me of Google Wave - which reminds me that the lifetime of this product might not be too long

Pretty hard to make out what this is from the page, no links to more detailed information. What&#x27;s &quot;customized help&quot;?<p>Web page also seems unfinished (showing many placeholder texts like &quot;arrow_forward&quot; at least on Firefox)

Hey look! It’s yet another google rebrand!<p>In addition to not trusting that this platform will be supported by google for any extended amount of time (if you can consider google’s “support” track record support at all) I have zero interest in feeding all the “meaningful discussions” of my company into the google data surveillance&#x2F;harvesting complex. Hard pass.

This looks very bland and unoriginal. Too much whitespace.

All product pages need an <i>is</i> sentence. Telling me what it can do or enable without first telling me what it <i>is</i> does not help me understand it.

This is evidently rebranded Google+, as the &quot;See more features&quot; link (at time of comment) points to the feature comparison chart for Google+

When Google shut down Google+ to consumers last year, it was never fully removed for Gsuite users.<p>Google is branding this as the replacement for Google+ (and sending out emails to Gsuite admins re: content migration from Google+ to Currents)<p>Here was the announcement of the beta last April: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;04&#x2F;currents-for-gsuite.html?m=1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;04&#x2F;currents-for-gs...</a>

Quote from The Verge on Currents: &quot;This is not the first time Google has rolled out a product called Currents; it was previously a magazine app that went through a few iterations before becoming Google News.&quot;<p>I find Google utterly confusing. It&#x27;s a constant stream of, rename this product here, make two products that do almost the same thing there, merge these two products but without combining the key features of both. A total mess.<p>It&#x27;s not just retiring old products, but creations like the Google Nest Home Hub Plus Max Whatever.

Is there a list of what damn google chat client to use? I have allo, hangouts, gtalk, gchat, gmail chat, google+ and a whole buch more.<p>What works? Whats deprecited? Is anyone behind the controls out there?

As others have suggested, this is the replacement for Google+. I literally just got this email: &quot;Currents will replace Google+ for G Suite customers on July 6, 2020&quot;

I find that whatever Google releases these days I’m reticent to even bother trying it. I just assume they’ll kill it in a year or so anyway.

I haven’t had a meaningful discussion since the debate club at college. People today just can’t do it, you have the chance to maybe string a few words together before they label you as friend or foe, and if the latter they’ll try to leave or silence you.<p>There’s no way I’ll attempt that at work as it will only end up in me being fired.<p>And this coming from Google, of all places.

It seems similar to chat.google.com . I wonder why they create products so similar instead of focusing in just a good one.

I think Google should embrace the naysayers &amp; should have named this “Catch Up” … tagline: “Don’t be slack, catch up with your co-workers as we catch up with the competition.&quot;

I don&#x27;t get this site sometimes. This is a pretty quiet launch of a pretty minor GSuite feature, the wild extrapolating in this thread is ridiculous.

We&#x27;ll consider using it in 4 years from now :) Google will lose interest in 2 years and shut it down like a kid playing with Lego.

Hah, this finally hammers the nail in the coffin that Google has truly lost its way under Sundar. Any bets as to how long it’ll be before this is shuttered like Wave? Meanwhile Slack, Zoom etc have whizzed past Google. Heck, even Microsoft has been a lot more proactive in this space with teams

Wave, G+, Currents?<p>Fool me once, shame on you; Fool me twice, shame on you; But fool me a third time?

Why do you have contact sales to try out a Chatroom app?

You know that joke sleazy guys make - tonight I’m looking to meet my next ex-wife?<p>Well, tonight I just saw the next ex-Google product, just a few short years away from being sunsetted.

This is hilarious given Googles history of firing people who have attempted to have meaningful discussions at work. And as others have pointed out, how many months until they abandon this one? Why would anyone adopt anything new from Google at this point when it probably won&#x27;t exist a year later?

What a joke.<p>&gt; Top questions about Currents<p>&gt; Who has access to Currents? Can I interact with people outside of my organization?<p>&gt; How do I manage and moderate the use of Currents?<p>&gt; How much does Currents cost?<p>Really? There are already questions and they are this lame? I seriously doubt it. And of course it&#x27;s 3 questions so it can fit that un-creative 3 column marketing site format.<p>To be fair, it&#x27;s just a FAQ under a different name. FAQ aren&#x27;t really questions that people ask, it&#x27;s just a company being too lazy to come up with real documentation.<p>It&#x27;s not like anyone has been burned by a Google product that is a name of something that occurs in the ocean before either.