Google+ dying on its arse – shock new poll Google has bet the company on Google+, but it’s dying on its arse. A study by traffic analysts RJ Metrics suggests that public engagement with the social network is weak, and failing to gather momentum. "The decay rate here is very concerning," says the report, summarised here. "Users are less and less likely to make …
I certainly fit that pattern - I have a Windows Live profile (or two) that I only ever use when forced to and a Google+ account that I largely ignore.
I also have Twitter and Facebook accounts that barely get any attention and there's a MySpace account somewhere too. Come to that there's Yahoo!, Geocities and goodness knows what else that I've signed up to and then ignored.
Google doesn't need to actively disengage from G+, users are doing that themselves.
If they wanted to get people using it more they could start by encouraging app developers to include it in the combined social media apps for smartphones so that a single status update went to G+ as well as Twitter and Facebook and G+ posts made by friends got inserted into the time line.
I suspect there are others, like me, that use Google+, even sparingly, but never use Facebook and don't have a Facebook account. The fact that Google's default privacy settings are private compared to Facebook defaulting to open will attract a different crowd.
Also, betting the company on it? I doubt it somehow, they are an advertising agency, Google+ is just one of many outlets for those adverts,
Yes but they have revamped even the main google.com page around your personal profile and + account. + failing won't bring Google down (which technically is what betting the company on it would mean) but it is an awful lot of work wasted, which has also brought lots of criticism from unhappy users.
Product not forced on people in "product forced on people in flopping shock" shock.
Wesley doesn't understand youtube or G+. Before the change you needed to log in to youtube in order to rate a video. Now that youtube and its ratings are being incorporated into G+, you...need to log in to youtube in order to rate a video. Youtube users are now part of G+ but they are not forced to visit plus.google.com EVER and Youtube handles are kept separate from G+ profiles. It's like how on facebook you might be "forced" to log in in order to rate a video. But facebook would count you as a user. Youtube's hundreds of millions of user accounts don't appear in the G+ user stats.
Disagree with this. Hanging out on Plus is like going to a party filled full of chesty white male tech bloggers talking at you. It's the LEAST engaging experience I've had on the net, easily. In contrast on Facebook I know poltical activists, journalists, union reps, artists and many other people that I have a real relationship with.
Good riddance to it. I don't like being coerced into using services that are substandard.
If social media persona was stored in a standardised data structure and exportable to a new service then swapping hosting companies would be more viable. Ideally you should be able to share access to it across multiple social media hosts.
Sadly, it's not in the interests of monopoly holder Facebook to open up the market. But it happened with document formats and is a driving factor concern in cloud storage, so maybe given a big enough anti trust case it could be implemented.
You are right that Facebook is successful because it's awesome. Arguably, windows achieved it's monopoly position by being the best product on the market. However, these products become very hard to compete with due to lockin. Even if G+ has better features, very many of my friends use only facebook. Facebook does arguably have a monopoly, enjoying some 95% of social network usage time in the US.
The value of a social network is in the friends you have on there. That makes them uniquely able to see off competition through pure momentum. This is bad for the consumer because it means no one can win against facebook by inovating. It could be broken by forcing them to open thier APIs in a massive way, so that a post, and a profile, on G+ was also a post on Facebook for instance.
I hope social networks will decentralise, so that we can have a choice of supplier, more like email. I don't think this will happen without intervention. I think this is due to momentum, due to monopoly marketshare. I think facebook is a bundled product (it has many components, you don't get to choose them). I think there is room, and utility, in a slap on the wrist here.
Sure, monopoly holder Facebook haven't implemented an open standard for social networking. It's a good job Google came along, with their "do no evil" mantra, and implemented a full open solution to the problem. That's why everyone flocked to the more open G+, right?
I have plenty of friends, but prefer to socialise with them IN PERSON rather than via Facebook. For the rest, G+ is a far better service.
This weekend is a prime example, the Williams fire at their F1 pit, all the Twitter stuff was taking about it in 140 characters, the #f1 tag in G+ had live video streams of the fire, inline pictures of Sennas car remains etc... The information was just as relevant and upto date as the #f1 tag in Twitter, but infinitely more useful.
The video hangouts are unparalleled, and something most people are missing out on.
People are (slowly) seeing that G+ is the best bits of Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, and that the privacy is easier to comprehend.
...until 'People are (slowly) seeing that G+ is the best bits of Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, and that the privacy is easier to comprehend.'...
...because it seems apparent that people are seeing anything of the sort...and are reacting to Google's ram-it-down-your-throat approach with a 'f**k-you' response.
People and PCs have come on a ways since the days Google bamboozled everyone into installing it's invasive, chunky and really f**king annoying toolbar...which was their first real attempt to shove their product down everyones' throats - which unfortunately worked...
@Mr. Shitpeas - no, the point is that they are TRYING to force people into using it, and people are ignoring them. Just like I have to ignore the in-your-face "use Google Chrome" ad that's foisted on me every time I visit google.com these days.
The problem is that Facebook is so popular it now has its own social ethics.
I can't add my interesting friend, for instance, without either a) adding my interesting friend's neurotic partner who posts crap about kittens sixty three times a day or b) mortally offending said interesting friend. I'm a hell of a lot more choosy about Facebook friends than many people seem to be but I _still_ wind up with three or four who just spam incredibly dull crap all day.
Hell, it's hard enough to refuse friend requests from (former, even) coworkers without offending anyone.
This is a product of G+ circles.
You decide which of your circles see a particular update, so my engineer friends will see my code rants, and my family will see my holiday snaps. When you recieve Only the kind of info from your friends that They think You care about, there is a lot less broing Not You stuff. It's a big difference.
But it completely removes the serendipity factor. It's why I hate tailored news sites: "Oh, you looked at this article once -- here's 200 like it! And we're starting to filter out anything you've never looked at before!"
Great. I ate applesauce once, and now it's applesauce dinner time.
I really hope that google ignores these propaganda pieces and keeps going ahead with google plus. The noise/signal ratio is way lower than on facebook, and the private groups are really a great way to discuss private issues.
You might probably see less activity than on facebook, but that only means that nobody is interested in sharing with you, not that nobody is sharing...
Search is not Google's business. Advertising is.
Facebook has sneaked up on Google and now has more of the internet users' attention than they do -- and unlike Google, Facebook can say to advertisers: "How about we run your ad to 18-25 year-old-females living in these six urban areas who like sushi restaurants and have a birthday coming up in the next three weeks".
This is why Google needed to do well in Social Networking: their current advert targeting cannot match what Facebook can offer, and Facebook's user base is now so large it is becoming a serious competitor to Google as an online ad platform, and to reiterate: online advertising is Google's only revenue generator. Nothing else, from all of the company's myriad products, produces one red cent of profit for Google.
Sure, G+ turning out to be a flop isn't going to shut them down next week, but this is yet another project from Google that has not delivered for the company, and is the third "social" product to fail. That kind of record risky for their long term survival.
Yes, but Google is even better placed than Facebook on mobile. Facebook isn't really doing very well at monetising all that personal data and it isn't doing it at all on mobile. Google Plus is a reasonable extension for Google to its existing services by providing a single sign-on. I noticed the other day that my Google Plus pictures are visible to my Android device.
The default of not posting publicly and actively advising against it is not only smart towards savvy users and the data protection crowd it also means that only Google really knows what people are doing.
I know what your saying, but no matter how many users a particular company has unless Facebook get good conversion rates on those Ads they won't be pulling in as much revenue as Google who could have better conversion rates on the Ads they run.
If you want to pay for internet advertising you go with the company that's going to get you the click throughs.
For your average user, Facebook is wherever Google says it is - remember this?
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login.php
I know several people like the folk commenting to the linked article, whose approach to Internet use is to start their browser, type the name of what they want and take the first link offered by Google's search. It works for Facebook and it works for widgets, so widget sellers understand the importance of being high in Google's search results. If Google screw that up, then they may go the way of webcrawler, excite, etc.
True, although the reasons for this lack of success seem to be a reluctance on the part of Facebook to engage in large-scale advertising. Placement of Facebook ads on the right-hand column of their interface also makes them very easy to ignore.
This doesn't diminish the fact that Facebook has a capability that Google currently lacks: that of tying a user's viewing preferences to real-world demographic information. All that Google knows is that a person or persons who habitually use a particular browser have looked at a particular set of topics.
It's not what Facebook are doing now that worries Google, it's what Facebook could do. Also, the number of small businesses in my area (hardly the beating heart of the tech industry) who now just say "Find us on Facebook" rather than putting up a website (and thus having something that an AdWords campaign would link to) must be cause for concern for Google.
See
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/16/gm_drops_facebook_ads/
"FB user base is now so large it is becoming a serious competitor to Google"
FB reach 50%, Google reach 90%
"Nothing else, from all of the company's myriad products, produces one red cent of profit for Google."
They do generate revenue from Google apps but it's low profile - not just the individuals paying a few $ a year for extra storage but, for example, I believe Virgin Media email accounts are outsourced to Google. Whether that's making much profit at present is immaterial, Google's in business for the long term, not the quick win. How many internet wonderkids build up a project for a $BN sale or IPO then we see it drop off the radar when the next big thing arrives, social networking being a prime example. MySpace -sold for half a billion in 2005, overtook Google to be most visited web site then a steep decline until 2011 sold again for $40M. Friends Reunited sold 2005 for $200m, went down the toilet, sold again in 2010 $40m, current valuation $8m.
The fact is that Google learnt from the mistakes of other social networks and built a great system. It lacks the critical mass of users at present, well coming late to the party that's inevitable but fashions change. FB have something of a track record of making changes their user's seriously don't like - well now there's an alternative. As far as I can see the only advantage of FB is that your friends are already on FB. There's a lot not to like about FB and G+ addresses those disliked aspects.
As far as I'm concerned I don't regard (online) social networking as a vital part of my existence, I don't value myself by how many online friends I've got (just as well since I never accept FB "friend" requests!)
I occasionally use FB but in "read-only" mode, I give it as little personal data as I can and lock down everything I can to keep a low profile. I think it was especially dirty to ask for email account login details without making it clear it could rifle through your contacts and that giving any third party any of your passwords is bloody stupid anyway (which is why I didn't).
This "news" has everything about the Facbook IPO. It's all about making investors feel happy that Google won't overtake Facebook in the same way Facebook killed MySpace.
I wil bet money that Google (and G+) will be around long after Facebook is a baren MySpace-like wasteland...
"Any suggestions for how Google can disentangle itself from Plus?"
Yes.
Leave it to die. Focus on Gmail(1) and Android(2).
(1). Gmail is a great service. The way to exploit that is to use extend it and reposition it and Google+ as an identity service, like Windows Live. Then, other than innovating around email, leave it, and rake in the advertising cash.
(2). Fix the fragmentation issue so that all devices, like iOS and WP, run the latest version. Add a music service a la iTunes/Zune. Heavily tie it into the Gmail-based identity service. Then, other than innovate on phone UI, leave it, and rake in the advertising cash.
>The ad giant has ripped up its privacy policies and redesigned its consumer services around Google+
A lot of the privacy policies were also re-written so that other Google products could share data. True G+ was sold as the central hub to this but it is not the only reason. Now your gmail can share data with your gdocs, your search results can be even more linked to what you say and so on.
It never made much sense for 1 company to have dozens of user agreements when most users would happily agree to a single umbrella one that would provide for all the services. True when it started many people would have been miffed if gdocs had access to contact data and gmail was reading all you wrote but now that all the systems are established there is no huge fight back to what many see as a similication.
I do agree that Google would have liked to provide all the adds to it's very own Facebook and had a little more power to target those adds but "social search" is not yet that critical and I don't expect Google's revinues will die overnight if G+ fades away.
{I would also say that I see far more non-public posts than public ones from users}
Like the real names thing makes a difference. The vast majority of people want to use their real name because the whole point of a social network is to be you and find your real-life friends. Having to email phone your mate and ask "what's your ID on XYZ" is an immediate lose.
Sure a minority want fake names but they are not going to tip the balance between a mainstream site succeeding/failing.
That may have been true originally, but since people are now becoming (very slowly) aware of just how bad Farcebork can be for your privacy and future employment prospects, almost nobody I know uses a real name. Several have multiple accounts for different 'soclial circles' as they don;t trust FB to separate the information.
So you have to e-mail them once - big deal. With the amount of people on FB it is quicker anyway ("Oi, Dave - which one of the 34,200 Dave Brown's are you?")
The whole value of G+ to me is not vomiting my random thoughts to a bunch of complete strangers as on Twitter and Facebook, it's vomiting my random thoughts to a bunch of close friends I don't get to see often enough in the real world.
I realise that "privacy" and "Google" are not great conceptual bedfellows, but I really like the controlled privacy that Circles gives.
I think there might be something like "close friends" on FB, but I don't think it's as well developed.
> I realise that "privacy" and "Google" are not great conceptual bedfellows...
Since the whole Net is supposed to be the antithesis of privacy.. Or rather it is non-private by default; people accept the crap safety values of social networks.
It's just that Google got caught by bad timing over its data retention publicity and that has put off me at least.
I have an account I only use for e-mail and I am falling out of love with that. Not that I have all that much to worry about unless George Bush and Tony Blair get sorted and the Feds come bungling to me.
Why do you have a "bunch of complete strangers" on Facebook. I only have a bunch of close friends I don't get to see often enough in the real world. Sounds like you're doing Facebook wrong.
Similar with Twitter - I follow friends and interesting people - not those vomiting random thoughts!
I'm no Facebook fan, and I'm sorry for picking on your post when many others make the same comments, but it makes me laugh when people post this assumption that Facebook is all "vomit of random thoughts" and Google+ is somehow more high-brow and intellectual.
You see posts from the people/friends/whatever *you've* added or are following, whether on Facebook or Google+ - the network doesn't determine the content. If you're following fucktards on Facebook, and professors on Google+, that's the reason. If you don't want to see vomit of random thoughts, don't follow or befriend the people posting that crap.
Rant over.
I have loads of activity on my G+ account and I post something most days, too. Also there's no bullshit 'Come and join me on my farm' or 'What kind of Koala are you?' invites.
Perhaps they were paid by Farcebork for that 'survey', to make FB look more important, or they just don't know how to use G+
Let the Farceborkers stay there, tending Koalapeople on their virtual farms. G+ is a much nicer place altogether.
Needed to be a distributed federation (a la email or xmpp) to kill facebook. But then Google wouldn't control the data, and we can't have google without big data, can we?
On the bright side, this post prompted my monthly visit to G+.
On the downside, I find myself actively avoiding posting, since the death spiral means I'll just end up having to rescue the content later.
Now I'm able to turn off "What's Hot", I'm much happier.
But the problem is - Google Plus was just too late. Something good enough already existed, and had so much momentum Google Plus can't beat it.
They need a USP, but good luck on finding one.
I want it to work, I really do. But with my entire family and friends on Facebook, why would I post on anything else?
Perhaps the only real way to save Google Plus is have a "Share with Facebook" and "Import from Facebook" option.
They tried that with Buzz and Wave. Both flopped. They undoubtedly ARE constantly trying to come up with new ideas but the problem is, that is hugely difficult and you can't inspire a genius idea simply by throwing money.
You only have to look at Google and MS to see they are always doing R&D into a myriad of different things, most of which never even get reported on let alone put into production. For every gmail and google maps you can bet there are a dozen projects that never made it outside Google's offices.
Wave was excellent and a lot of the tech they created is now in other products, eg. multiple simultaneous editors in Docs. What I don't understand about Wave is how it gets called a Social product when it was a combination of email, blog, docs, forum, messenger etc. If that's the qualification to be a social product then GMail, Blogger, Youtube and Google Talk would be social products too (and so would the old Reader), but all we hear about are google's social failures and never its successes.
I use it daily for all manner of things and post regularly.
naturally a lot of people signed up for it then lost interest. That's the same for any new thing. Now the honeymoon is over of course there's a trend downwards but it's what Google does now that makes/breaks G+.
I used to use Facebook but it's turned into a cess pit of meaningless drivel. At least now on G+ i get targetted interesting updates about my many hobbies.
_C
it could have something to do with g+ layout and the usa google way of doing things.
but it dont work for me or for millions of others
i have to use facebook,when i see my facebook page i just think damn,wh.at a mess,when i go to g+i just ithink,blah.g+ intergration between diffrrent parts see;i agree wms to have been done by an alien.usualy i can get my head around the mindset of who or why a program looks or works as it does but not with g+ .designed by a commitee of camels i think.
i agree with folk posting earlier,tie more services direct to gmail.
I see a lot of activity for the things I take an interest in and the user interface beats Facebook by a mile. To be honest I don't really see the point of most social networks though and I wouldn't be surprised if lots of people do give it a try, don't think much of it and never go back. Is Facebook really that different? I doubt it? Bet there are lots of dead accounts and people who only post messages privately and therefore aren't measurable.
A few of my family signed up specifically for the video Hangout feature but as I've come to expect from the perpetual beta crapware they shovel out, we couldn't get it to work. That wasted hour+ is likely to be the entire lifetime use of G+ for most of them.
I actually signed up voluntarily before that but remain baffled by the cryptic browser UI in it (and Gmail after decades using real email software). Google really need to hire some user facing programmers and designers. I may be unusual in that ;)
As far as I can tell there is ZERO content posted by friends and family in my G+, the couple of news and announcement feeds actually work better over Twitter. Till todays post I'd forgotten I even had G+ - probably the only benefit to signing up is all the nagging messages infesting Google pages go away!
No, you are not unusual there. The UI is shitty, and you can generally count on Google for that. One major complaint: to see multiple posts in the feed, you have to scroll, a lot. Compare that to the evolution of the facebook feed and how much work they put into it. A company can throw as much money as they want at a product, but without the evolution of the interface where actual users give feedback on things that could be better, it will never be "right" off the line.
Google started reminding me about my Google+ profile. They started spamming me with 'top 3 posts of the week' emails, and bunged them on my home screen, seemingly with no way to get rid.
It worked. It reminded me to commit G+ suicide.
It's a shame in some ways. It was a nicer interface, easier to use and allowed easier privacy control. I log into Facebook about once a month, and it's a horrible UI mess. Every month I log in to FB again, and they've changed the UI AGAIN. I'd post a bit on there, if I could wade through the shit.
In the end my family are on FB. That's where the cute pictures of the kids are. None of them moved to G+, so I had no reason to bother with it.
It's got some loyal fans though. But that may be worse. They defend it passionately in any discussion. But they'll probably not win many users over, and will be incredibly pissed off (and just as vocally so) when Google close it down in a year or two. Like Buzz, Wave, Orkut etc.
I'd say he is important to what Google brings to Social.
The question is will it be Digg 1.0 or Digg 4.0? I know Kevin was more hands-off towards the end of his time with Digg and mi.lk was well-received but who knows what the future holds.
I spend more time on G+ but would consider short-selling some FB stock....
To answer the actual question on disentanglement: just go back to the old uncluttered search page, that's it.
I have an Android phone, so I have the requisite Gmail account needed to activate it the phone, but other than that, I only use Google for search, which is where they make their money. I'll keep using Google for search if they quit trying to shove Google+ down my throat. But lately the home page has irritated me enough by hiding the preferences and trying to force me to log in, that I've started at least trying to use Bing.
I don't trust Google to protect my privacy. I don't mean protect it from the public, I mean protect it from them, from any number of governments, and from anyone willing to pay money for my information. They already know what I search for. I don't want them also knowing the contents of my emails and who my friends are. So I use a paid subscription to Hotmail, with which I'm very satisfied. I have a occasionally used Facebook account with a friends list consisting only of my actual friends, and not including anyone from work. I have a Linked-In account for professional contacts, and to Linked-In's disappointment, I refuse to give them my entire life's history. I keep my work and private lives separate.
Facebook has been going for 8 years.
G+ is a relative newcomer which is its disadvantage competing against the established.
People's tastes will change too which may work in the favour of G+
G+ shouldn't be directly compared to Facebook. G+ binds lots of services good in their own right together (Gmail, Youtube, Blogger), providing convenience of sign on and sharing.
Too much focus on G+ itself when it is more a underpinning fabric for these services.
A Facebook weakness I can see is being too time-oriented: it's not easy for example to see all the things you Like as a list, there is no notion of favourites or categorised tagging.
Facebook may have been going for 8 years, but it quickly overtook the already established Myspace..
In the meantime, a lot of people I know that started using G+ have gone back to facebook.
You argue that G+ binds a lot of services together for a single sign on. Yes, they are bound together. As they were before G+ was conceived. Bound by a single Google ID.
I agree, it's too early to count G+ out, but so far, G+ is following the same pattern Wave did. Launched with a lot of hype. A lot of people registering claiming it's a bold new way of sharing documents. Then, usage declined as people realised they could do everything they needed without sending their information to an outside company. Eventually, Google pulled the plug. Google have shown no signs they are doing that with G+, but Wave only lasted a couple of years before they did it. G+ is already a year old, and apparently has a declining membership.
I think the main reason why Google+ is in trouble (but also the main reason it ever got started), is the way they coerced gmail users and others into having a +-profile.
Obvious coercion is not a good idea in these matters - just ask Facebook.
In the past FB have changed their general design - spawning outrage and numerous "We demand the old facebook back"
They've learned from those mistakes. Any new feature is presented not as force, but as an option. "Switch to the new X - it's a whole new experience"
When enough people have voluntarily switched, they can then slowly prepare the rest for forced switching.
Instead of making the new thing a forced thing, you make it hip and smart and have people switch on their own accord.
It might be translateable into G+, but I hope not.
I don't trust Google as far as I can throw them - and my server-farm throwing skills are quite low.
Granted Facebook does the same thing, but Google has way more tentacles with which to wring out the remaining info about me.
I don't bother checking FB - it's really just a list of inane drivel.
On the other hand, G+ posts are interesting because I choose to follow people who make interesting posts about subjects which interest me.
And the circles option is brilliant. I can post up a picture of lit'lun messily eating a chocolate biscuit to only my family circle - cos it's only of interest to the grandparents and aunties. It means I don't have to inflict the picture to a mass of people who aren't interested.
The final point is that G+ enables me to share posts/pics etc to people when I only have their email address. For example, I act as the unofficial camp photographer for camping trips involving about twelve families. All I need is to collect their email addresses to be able to share all the photos with them.
FB is too blunt a tool.
Google+ was recommended to me by a friend. So I clicked on it and set-up a G+ account. Before I knew what happened, it had put up a public webpage with every photo or image I had posted to my various (separate) blogs. So all the various blog topics (some slightly sensitive) were suddently linked to my real world identity via the images. If I were a political dissident in certain countries, this would have revealed my true identity and (in the worst case) I would have been taken out and shot. Complete and utter privacy FAIL with potentially life-changing consequences.
Google+ is one of the worst experiences that I've ever had on the Interweb.
Hah hah hah, loving all the Google fanbois (i.e most of the reg commentards) spluttering about how Google+ is just misunderstood and the figures are wrong and everyone uses it and and and….
The reality is that it is SHITE. It is an utter, utter fail, along with most of the rest of Google’s ‘projects’ (outside of search).
This is the beginning of the end for Google. They have one profitable business (search) that is starting to get seriously slayed by Bing (30% share in the US I believe now). Their Android ‘business’ is doing great for Samsung, but, umm, not so good for Google.
I do not know anyone that still uses G+. It is dead. And I am pleased. Most people have now twigged that Google is an evil, predatory company that is only interested in selling their users data to the highest bidder. About bloody time too.
How much is each Facebook user worth? $100+?
The only way to break the Social Network monopoly now, is to pay people. $10 for joining and $2.50 for each invite that joins would soon bump up their numbers and once that kick starts the numbers it would naturally snowball from there. They could even use it to popularise Google checkout, and use that as a validation technique for people joining the network.
Facebook is a bit like reading a tabloid newspaper - full of gossip, tacky pictures and fluff. It is designed to keep you on their property, consuming their content and playing their games, and then coming back for more. They want to to spend as much time as possible on the site and had designed it as such.
Google+ on the other hand is something akin to an editorially independent broadsheet with a wide breadth and depth of information available and linked. It is designed to allow people to add, link to and discuss the things that interest them. In doing so Google gain two things - information about your interests (to use when targeting adverts) and human validation of information on the web (a huge mechanical turk, if you like) that they can use as another input to their search engine algorithms. Look at a stream of posts in Google+ and you see lots of links to content, almost all of which is not inside Google+ or even hosted by Google. It isn't designed to keep people 'on the premises' on purpose - so a Facebook comparison will always fail no matter how successful Google think they have been.
Google+ has some really great features. The hangout could stand on its own and make the whole
Thing worthwhile if only there were ever anyone on it to hangout with. Like I said when Google started this experiment, they need to convince people to leave Facebook if they're going to be successful. They've failed to do so, despite having several features that should make it a healthy competitor to Facebook.
Sadly I think they're stuck with it at this point. It's going nowhere in both directions. I don't think it's likely to drag them under though.
A couple of people have raised the point that circles and hangouts are good G+ features. That may be true. However, what is more likley I wonder:
a) Lots of Facebook users will 'find out' about the new G+ features, make a decision to leave Facebook because of them, and move across to G+
b) Facebook will quietly implement similar features and maintain its dominace over the pathetic me too product that is G+
Hmmm, I wonder......
I think Google are starting to get their business model wrong.
Ignoring Google+ (and the excellent Google Earth) for a moment:
Google search seems to think it knows better what i'm searching for than I do
Google search seems to think I can't spell
Google search no longer seems to perform boolean
Google have a service called Google Checkout, this generates revenue for Google.
Google haven't updated the osCommerce Google Checkout payment module to make it compatible with the 2.3.1 version of osCommerce, even though it has been out for quite a long time now, several people are bothering to search for a solution, Google Search doesn't reveal such a solution (from what I have seen) and yet osCommerce has a sizeable market share, and so they are losing payment custom to competitors such as paypal.
Linked with the Google Checkout issue, if you have an ecommerce site and don't have Google Checkout as a payment option, your Google Search rating may suffer!
Google have a social network site, that is anti-social, and anti-networking.
Google is my default webpage, my mobile runs Android, and i still tend to search with google first, but i'm sorry google, you simply cannot currently compete with facebook.
Let's face it, most facebook issues can be resolved by spending additional time configuring privacy options on a per-post basis, creating private groups of friends in which to have marginally more private conversations, not adding too many people you barely know, telling those you do know that if they ever add you to groups without permissions YOU WILL remove them from your facebook friends list, and by using advert blocking utilities.
Google+ on the other hand?
- it's issue is called facebook.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
