The Story Of How Google+ Tried And Failed
There are many things Google have done well in their history, social isn’t one of them. Orkut, Wave, Buzz and Google+ all in their own rights never amassed the traffic and traction that Google had seemingly hoped. That’s not to say that they didn’t bring some unique and fantastic features to the table, it’s just a fact of nobody wanted to adopt their product.
Throughout the 00’s Facebook grew at an enormously fast pace. And whilst Google clearly acknowledged that social was going to define the decade, they seemingly also appeared to somewhat dismiss Facebook as being much of a threat. For as long as they could that is.
How Google+ Was Born
This all changed through the push of one Google executive named Vic Gundotra. Vic had previously worked for Microsoft, and in his position within Google he was placing a lot of pressure on Larry Page:
“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.”
Google spent a reported $585 million in development of their Facebook competitor and launched it in June of 2011. Initial reviews of the service noted that Google had indeed created a solid social network. Google had put a heavy emphasis on photography and had also integrated their service nicely with all of the other Google products. It had potential.
You may remember Google+ Live Hangouts also became pretty common across the internet. Even former President of the United States Barack Obama was using them.
Zuckerberg Places Facebook On Lockdown
Mark Zuckerberg responded to the launch of Google+ by reportedly placing his company on lockdown. That was following one of his (what have now become signature) awkward speeches. He reportedly made it blatantly clear to employees that Facebook was going to war against Google.
There are many stories of how Facebook was actively trying to recruit employees directly out of Google at this point. In some cases finding themselves very successful in their attempts. In response Google instituted a policy that anyone who was given an offer by Facebook would immediately have their offer beaten by Google. Which obviously led many to actively interview at Facebook, purely in the pursuit of bettering their pay at Google.
Google+’s Evolution As A Platform
Throughout the years Google+ went through a multitude of stages in design, and a shift in focus. 2015 saw the departure of Vic Gundotra, which reportedly came as a particular shock to many within Google. Especially as there was reportedly no succession plan.
It was also in 2015 that Google shifted away from trying to directly compete with Facebook, rather positioning Google+ as a platform for photography and streams.
But in the end, Google+ remained a platform that nobody seemed to be adopting besides perhaps a few loyal fans. Sure, they had lots of accounts on the service but most of them came from people with existing Google accounts from services like YouTube and Gmail. According to their blog post on October 8th 2018, 90% of user sessions on the platform lasted for less than 5 seconds.
Perhaps the state of Google+ is best summed up in this tweet:
The Privacy Breach
The most alarming part of the news in the past couple of days relating to this shut down was in relation to something Google dubbed ‘Project Strobe’. In Google’s own words this project would be:
a root-and-branch review of third-party developer access to Google account and Android device data and of our philosophy around apps’ data access.
This took place in March. Probably while you were focusing your attention on Facebook as they were embroiled in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Google found that potentially up to 500,000 peoples personal information had been compromised.
Google’s legal heads made the decision to avoid releasing this information to the public to save Google from ending up in the same position as Facebook (or worse).
The only comforting thing about Google’s report on the situation is that the information leaked included only peoples names, age, gender and email. No other info was compromised. The thing that leaves me the most unnerved is that it took the Wall Street Journal publishing an article to force Google to let this information go public.
The End Of Google+
Google announced in the same blog post that Google+ would be shut down reportedly over the next 10 months. My guess is that Google will try to sweep this failure under the rug. It will be one of the things that wont be spoken about at company gatherings…
The real question now becomes whether the news of this privacy breach is going to spark further legal or political involvement. And the answer to that question will be answered only in the coming months. As for the shutting down of Google+, I doubt many (if any) will be particularly heartbroken.
Credits: The Guardian, The Next Web, New York Times, Mashable, Business Insider, Vanity Fair, USA Today
