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Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers
- ben_w 8y agoA curiously soft end given all of the (IMO valid) outrage about “real names” when it was first announced.
- pessimizer 8y agoWe gave up the idea of pseudonymity on social networks just so Google could lose money on a product that it aggressively attempted to force the pseudonymous users of its other products to use. Actually pretty sad.
- PaulHoule 8y agoYippie!
- sys_64738 8y agoThey did this with Google Reader 5 years ago. I don't think you can trust the longevity of Google services beyond GMail and Google Search.
- jasonvorhe 8y agoBingo!
- cromwellian 8y agoWell, hardly anyone was using it. How long should a company maintain something for free that not many people are using? Where's the sadness over the death of Apple Ping, or MobileMe?
- 394549 8y ago>> They did this with Google Reader 5 years ago. I don't think you can trust the longevity of Google services beyond GMail and Google Search. > Well, hardly anyone was using it. How long should a company maintain something for free that not many people are using? You misunderstand. He's not necessarily saying Google should maintain Google Reader or Google+ forever; he's saying that users can't trust Google to keep all but its most popular services online. If you like some new/niche Google service so much that you'll be unhappy when it's shut down, you should seriously consider not using it in the first place. I'm not sad to see Google+ go, but the aggressive rate of metrics-driven product shutdowns by modern SaaS companies is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Users learn not get used to new services and hold of using them heavily, because they'll probably get shut down; that dampens adoption so services inevitably get shut down. IMHO, SaaS companies need to embrace niche products, otherwise they're eventually going to kill off a lot of consumer appetite for innovation.
- ValentineC 8y ago> Where's the sadness over the death of Apple Ping, or MobileMe? What useful features does MobileMe have, that iCloud doesn't? I just looked up the list of features and the only thing missing seems to be publishing a personal website with iWeb. I don't know a single person using iTunes Ping, or heh, Game Center's social features.
- rocqua 8y agoThis is rather different from Google Reader. Reader was a popular service that was going strong, the discontinuation really was a hassle to a lot of people. Google+ was essentially not used at all, so this should affect very few people.
- V-eHGsd_ 8y agoIronically, google reader was discontinued because they wanted people to use g+ exclusively for "sharing", and reader's ability to share/surface articles to friends was seen as unnecessary competition.
- artursapek 8y agoReader died in vain
- danso 8y agoWhat’s the evidence that Google Reader was “a popular service that was going strong”? I don’t doubt there were a bunch of people in tech and media who were and still are vocally angry, but I don’t recall data showing that Reader was anything but a niche product.
- acdha 8y agoIt wasn’t expanding at Twitter/Facebook rates but it was apparently growing on a continuing basis. More importantly, however, it was popular with communities with outsize influence – journalists, writers, bloggers, academics, librarians, etc. who used it to follow and share — so when they launched a really half-assed replacement (i.e. it didn’t even work on mobile) most of the people writing reviews and answering questions were starting from a position of something which was useful to them being replaced with a mess, and Google+ never recovered from that bad reputation. Years later, I was at a museum/gallery/archive/library tech conference and the Google Cultural Institute folks were running their sales pitch. Multiple people asked them where their institution would be “when you cancel this like Google Reader”, a sentiment I’ve heard in enough other contexts that I doubt is fully appreciated by Google management even if it has been good for getting users to think about lock-in.
- glenrivard 8y agoThey now have five of the top ten apps used on all smartphones so would expect those to not going anywhere. So things like YouTube, maps, etc. Plus Chrome not going anywhere as well as the Google home. But would still expect them to iterate. So even though Android has over 80% share still would not be surprised to see them move to Fuchsia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_smartphone_apps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_smartphon... List of most popular smartphone apps - Wikipedia
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- wccrawford 8y agoAnd they're killing Inbox, too.
- jonknee 8y agoOr Chrome, or Android, or YouTube, or Maps, or News, or Docs, or Translate or anything else that has a large number of users. Google Reader had some big fans, but never a large number of users. They don't get rid of stuff with lots of eyeballs.
- mcjiggerlog 8y agoInbox? Google Talk?
- packetslave 8y agoI don't think you can trust the longevity of Google services beyond GMail and Google Search. Reader was an active product for 8 years. What more do you want?
- PerryCox 8y agoGood, the only time I end up there is by mistake when trying to do something else.
- gaius 8y agoFTA: 90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds. Their own stats seem to back this: people arrive by mistake and immediately go somewhere else
- orcdork 8y agoIt's like following a search result to experts exchange on the age of stack overflow.
- kenhwang 8y agoThe more infuriating part is that it doesn't even work on mobile FF. So the few times I accidentally click on a G+ link from my Google assistant feed, I don't even get the benefit of seeing a post with just a link to the real content.
- notatoad 8y agoeven when i don't arrive there by mistake, i typically leave after less than five seconds - people would link to posts on G+ and before reading them i'd have to click through full-screen interstitials introducing me to the "new" G+ redesign. and i just didn't care, so i'd leave.
- coltonv 8y agoGoogle+ had terrible marketing and release, but it had some decent ideas that I wish other networks had carried over. The idea of "circles", where you had a circle for "acquaintances" "friends", "family" would be great on, say, Facebook, as it would allow me to filter down my feed to just the people I really care about but still have a connection to more distance acquaintances. Currently on Facebook the news feed is automatically generated, and the only control you have over it is to subscribe/unsubscribe from particular friends. Given hundreds of acquaintances, this is a pain, and made me give up on Facebook altogether. I wish social networks would trust me to decide what I want to see rather than just let an AI attempt to understand it, which in the end just ended up spamming my feed with clickbait and baby pictures from people I barely know.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoI was just about to post that Facebook has Friend List feeds, but it appears they're sunsetting that feature as of August 8th. https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/09/facebook-is-shutting-down-friend-list-feeds-today/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/09/facebook-is-shutting-down-...
- Sharlin 8y agoFB has been slowly making friend lists even less accessible than before, so no wonder nobody's using them. Currently just making a status update visible only to a given list requires a ridiculous exertion: Open privacy dropdown -> select "More" -> select "See all" (the fuck?) -> click "Custom" -> TYPE a prefix of the friend list name in the combobox -> select the list you want from the dropdown.
- coltonv 8y agoI had no idea this feature even existed. It was well hidden.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cronz 8y agoThe idea of circles sounds fantastic on paper but it's simply too much work for the common user. For most of the posts users would make, users would probably spend more time thinking about which circles to enable than actually writing the post. It's a headache and it leads to a poor experience, it feels like a hurdle, something you must do; it makes posting less natural. Facebook on the other hand offers the same functionality but it's "buried" so you can use it at your convenience.
- karpodiem 8y agoWhat a poorly managed company.
- glenrivard 8y agoPoorly managed? They have now grown over 20% the last ten quarters and now over 26% the last two. Since the beginning never declined for a quarter YoY. Even though the great recession. That is pretty hard to do.
- karpodiem 8y agoHow many FTEs do they have running G+? There are a bunch of OSS people that use it because Facebook sucks and Twitter is toxic. The good will from the OSS community in maintaining G+ can be easily paid for in the 250% growth you referenced. And please, save me from the 'we need to double down and focus on products that matter' - no, you need to maintain some credibility for your product ownership. That's why I don't spend a single dollar with GCE.
- Apocryphon 8y agoShouldn't the OSS community be using an OSS social media network like Mastodon anyway?
- mattkevan 8y agoNot if they want a reasonable amount of people to actually see what they’ve written...
- notfromhere 8y agoI mean you really can't argue that Google's attempts to move away from relying on ad revenue for most of its earnings have been successful
- karpodiem 8y ago"The bulk of Google’s $110.8 billion revenue in 2017 came from its proprietary advertising service, Google AdWords." https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/020515/business-google.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/020515/busin...
- _emacsomancer_ 8y agoWhat exactly does "sunsetting consumer Google+" mean? The blog post wasn't particularly enlightening. Are they shutting down Google+ as a social network?
- coltonv 8y agoFrom the article: "Action 1: We are shutting down Google+ for consumers." They will keep it active as an internal network, but regular old joes won't be able to use Google+ anymore.
- mc32 8y agoWhat about enterprise customers, does that remain or get sunset?
- Operyl 8y agoThey're going to continue to develop is, according to the post.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y agoSo why not just also leave it alone for the "consumers" who have developed communities there?
- Operyl 8y agoAsking the wrong person there, probably a lot easier for them I guess.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> They will keep it active as an internal network Probably, but the key point made in the article is that it will continue as an enterprise product, not just an internal one (though presumably Google is one of the enterprises that will continue using it.)
- 8y ago
- billconan 8y agoI'm surprised that google keeps blogger.com for this long. it doesn't appear to be a commercial success and its features fall behind newer platforms like medium.
- ronilan 8y agoThe best thing to ever come out of Google+ is this: https://youtu.be/LTq8TrA3hb4 https://youtu.be/LTq8TrA3hb4
- 4d66ba06 8y agoI like that there are also some privacy improvements in Android permissions mentioned in this post: "We are limiting apps’ ability to receive Call Log and SMS permissions on Android devices, and are no longer making contact interaction data available via the Android Contacts API."
- mindcrime 8y agoLOL, one more example of why one should never depend on anything from Google. developer adoption Gee, I wonder why? Maybe because they never released a usable write API and were basically just a little less developer-hostile than Twitter? G+ had a lot of potential, had Google chosen to truly embrace Open Standards, federation, and usable API's. As it is, they shot themselves in the foot by creating JAWG (Just Another Walled Garden). Anyway, maybe this will just help prod more people to join the Fediverse.
- jonknee 8y ago> never depend on anything from Google They're shutting it down precisely because no one was depending on it. How would anyone depend on a social network without any users?
- davidw 8y ago"No one" at Google scale might actually be quite a few people...?
- brownbat 8y agoThat's the tragedy. It's a business that became one of the richest companies in the world in a few years, obtaining massive capital looking for investments along the way. It then holds all those investments (of money or time or intelligence) to the same standard of success and failure.
- mindcrime 8y agoThey're shutting it down precisely because no one was depending on it. How would anyone depend on a social network without any users? It did have users. I have no idea the exact number, and clearly it wasn't as many as Facebook, but it wasn't the ghost town people always made it out to be. Some of the Communities were actually quite active.
- Apocryphon 8y ago
- jrrrr 8y agoG+ didn't even get its own sunset announcement post; it was mentioned in passing from a post about _something else_. Poor G+.
- ben174 8y agoI think that was by design. Trying to sweep it under the covers to avoid outrage. I share that article with friends and they're likely to read the first half of the headline and not bother reading it.
- pc86 8y agoSerious question, is anybody going to be outraged by sunsetting G+?
- robotrout 8y agoNot me. But it reinforces my commitment to never get attached to any Google service. The new GMail is also helping me with that.
- pc86 8y agoI really like Inbox and am dreading the day that inevitably gets canned.
- ihuman 8y agoI hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Inbox is getting shut down https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/12/17848500/google-inbox-shut-down-sunset-snooze-email-march-2019 https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/12/17848500/google-inbox-shu...
- pc86 8y agoWell at least when I get forced over in March it will be a good incentive to unsubscribe from all the newsletters I don't want :)
- Chunkyated 8y agooh no. My family have used G+ to share stuff. I don't want to have my mother-in-law on facebook, what else can we use? I really like the idea of circles, some stuff I would share only with my close family, other stuff would be shared with wider family and friends, etc.
- Ajedi32 8y agoFacebook has that feature now too, it's called "friend lists". Unfortunately it's a much less prominent feature and harder to use.
- kirykl 8y agoDo we get the + operator back in search ?
- jiveturkey 8y agocame here to say just that. the gall of google, claiming at the release of g+, that '+' was never an official qualifier and quotes were always the standard.
- bambax 8y agoPlease. It's something I miss every day.
- slater 8y agoAnd while they're at it, also a way to remove effin' books.google.com from search results
- Jordrok 8y agoCame here specifically looking for this comment and was not disappointed. +1 crickets
- andrewprock 8y agoShit, I've been using it all this time! No wonder my search results suck.
- azhenley 8y agoI recently started getting friend requests on Youtube (I didn't know it had such a feature!). Does this mean they are just shifting the social network features over to other products?
- TimothyBJacobs 8y agoYouTube has had friend requests and private messaging for a long time. At least 2008, maybe earlier.
- azhenley 8y agoEven now, I can't figure out how to send someone a friend request. All I see is a Subscribe button when I visit someone's profile.
- daledavies 8y agoI just spent 20 mins searching for this and on the Android app at least I can't figure it out either!
- y4mi 8y agonever used it myself, but its the third icon on the top-right corner (its a speech bubble with an arrow on it) after that you can click on [friends] and youll get a [friend me] url
- daledavies 8y agoIt's just not there though.
- joering2 8y agoSerious question: you build your own social network based on what people really want it too work like, and won’t track them or allow advertising, instead you invite just a handful of “promoters” every year to show same ad to everyone (to pay your bills) and build in tools that will accept facebook export format - how do you crank-start such network to beat an obvious chicken-and-egg problem?
- oddevan 8y agoSerious answer: I would allow connections to current social networks. Maybe even bill it as an aggregator of sorts, so you can pull in (just for display purposes) as much data from linked social networks as possible. Give people a real reason to use your app without making them sacrifice the connections they've already made.
- wccrawford 8y agoGoogle doesn't need to crank-start anything. They just release a new product with invite codes and people go nuts trying to get them. If the product is good, people will use it. If it's not, they won't, in the end. G+ wasn't good.
- hakfoo 8y agoThe problem with Google+ was the same problem as Facebook and Twitter have, except they were late to the party and didn't get a lot of free press and novelty-related attraction to help them gain traction. They built a platform designed with no sharper focus than "for everyone", because that's what will supposedly generate the DAUs. But you have to try to bolt community on top of it and that's what generates the actual stickiness. There are a galaxy of far stronger communities out there-- ones that were there long before Google+ and will be there long after. It's because they're clearly focused, themed communities-- newsgroups and forums. If you provide some thread to bind the membership-- whether it's "People who Maintain Vintage Sansui Stereo Equipment", "People Who Really Liked The Animated Series 'Gargoyles'" or "Class of 1977 at Francisco Franco High School", it means people will generate content compelling to future users, and come onboard with attainable expectations. These communities solved a lot of the problems that stymie many hypothetical Facebook killers: * Selling new users. Just post the archives-- you can sell what you have, rather than promising "if we get aggressive enough and steer people into inviting enough loose acquaintances, somehow magic will happen and real community appears." * Since they're more-or-less decentralized, you get very nice data partition models. On the outgoing side, you know that your messages are clearly restricted to one circle of potential viewers by default. On the incoming side, you're either viewing one community at a time, or aggregating yourself via RSS or the like under rules you know and understand. You're not going to be worried about a NSFW moment if you pop open "N-Scale Model Railway Enthusiasts Forum". * The psychographic mix. You started with a clear message of value for participation, a give and take. In contrast, the classic social media feed appeals, by default, to a very specific type of self-promoter/narcissist type who just wants to bellow into the void "Look at me eating a burrito by the Eiffel Tower" and wait for validation. Think of all the people who never got on FB/Twitter/etc. because they saw no value in this type of interaction, or joined but have just a vacant profile after realizing it wasn't offering anything for them. What the "community first" model doesn't do is scale to infinity. There are only so many people with any given interest. I think this is why Reddit is a success-- it's got a feel like a constellation of independent forums, that happen to use the same tech backend and SSO.
- 0xmohit 8y ago> Google is shutting down its long-neglected Facebook competitor Google+ following the disclosure of a vulnerability that could have resulted in third-party developers accessing private data from around 500,000 users, the company announced Monday. Source: https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/google-plus-shut-down-1202972233/ https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/google-plus-shut-down-...
- colonelxc 8y agoThat is in this post.
- Ajedi32 8y agoI wonder if Project Strobe is also behind Google's recent effort to limit the permissions of Chrome extensions. So far I'm really liking the direction they're taking with this; making permissions optional and more fine-grained.
- CPLX 8y agoThe use of the word "sunset" as a verb in posts like this is fucking infuriating. Yes, software types know what it means, but this is a consumer product with tens of millions of users, who have no familiarity with that term. It's a weasel word. The way to say this is in plain English. We're closing, shutting down, turning off, discontinuing, or something.
- zdragnar 8y agoWhat? Sunsetting something is used outside of software. Hell, it's even used to describe temporary laws ("sunset law"). It's also used for brands and business policies. And, sure, it might not make the top list of 1000 words you might hear on the street on any given day, but it's also very easy to search for. That doesn't make it a weasel word.
- huebomont 8y agoIt's absolutely a weasel word, because there are plenty of common and clear ways to say this. The only reason it exists is so companies don't have to use words that connote a lack of success.
- drewfrank 8y agoI think it exists because it's a concise way to communicate "this is ending, and will end in a predetermined amount of time, but it has not yet ended" in the same manner that sunset indicates that a day is ending but has not ended yet.
- lucb1e 8y agoI'm a non-native speaker and sunsetting is not clear to me. I guessed what it means because I know Google and how popular Google+ is (in relative terms, I'm sure there's still hundreds of thousands of people who will lose contacts over this), but if someone had said Cloudflare is sunsetting, I'd just not have known what it meant. And even knowing what it means, as I do now, I wouldn't say that sunsetting is any clearer in communicating that it's "going to" end than "shutting down" or "stopping" Google+. It's not as if the proposal said "ended" or "shut down" Google+, the "are" in something like "We're shutting down Google+" signals continuation to me.
- Ajedi32 8y ago> Users can grant access to their Profile data, and the public Profile information of their friends, to Google+ apps, via the API. Interesting, wasn't this basically the same problem that Facebook had with Cambridge Analytica?
- MikusR 8y agoWhere will Linus Torvalds blog now?
- fdej 8y agoHere's hoping that he follows up Linux and git by going and making a better social network!
- arkitaip 8y agoWould not surprise me if Linus actually did that.
- saalweachter 8y agoToo bad "GitHub" is already taken.
- jraph 8y agoAmazing, now we know why he has temporarily retired from kernel leadership and what he is really up to.
- tomjen3 8y agoHe has left the Linux project, at least temporarily[0], so presumably he will not be blogging, or alternatively he will have more time to host his own blog. [0]: https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-takes-a-break-from-linux/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-takes-a-break-f...
- anticensor 8y agoProbably a blockchain structured social network powered by git.
- halayli 8y agowhy don't they say it as it is, it failed miserably... instead of using security as an excuse to shutdown the service ?
- anticensor 8y agoBecause it is tough to admit failure.
- TimTheTinker 8y agoGoogle+ was a top-down, scrambling response to Facebook's meteoric rise. I think it ultimately failed because it didn't naturally mesh with or arise from Google's natural strengths. Google has always had amazing scientists and engineers working for them, but building a new social network requires less math/science and more of a human focus. (Of course, Facebook's data centers and ops are now the 6th wonder of the tech world, but that came later.)
- stan_rogers 8y agoIt failed in my case because it polluted every other Google property - search, YouTube suggestions, etc. I'd prefer that suggestions and search results be based on my preferences and not those of an idiot cousin or a foaming-at-the-mouth prepper I happen to work with.
- HillaryBriss 8y ago> ...Facebook's data centers and ops are now the 6th wonder of the tech world ... At the risk of not being taken seriously, er, what are the first 5 wonders of the tech world? Is AWS #1? Is Google's huge swarm of web search indexing machines #1? What makes it onto that list?
- TimTheTinker 8y agoI didn't mean that particular ordinal literally... personally, I'm impressed by how they're able to achieve such a high level of uptime, data integrity, and near-realtime communication.
- pantalaimon 8y agoWhen it launched it was terribly incomplete. It didn't even have events, which for a lot of people is a mayor reason to use Facebook and they could have even integrated it into Google calendar. Events were eventually added much later (like a year after launch?), but at that point interest had already died down. Why they did not delay the launch until it had parity with Facebook's core features is beyond me.
- dep_b 8y agoThey killed it when they decided it would be a good idea to inflate user numbers with YouTube and Gmail users. It's better to have less but active users than a ghost town.
- dionna767675 8y agoSuccess is what you make it Internet marketing on the next level https://souniqueincome.com https://souniqueincome.com
- badloginagain 8y agoI wonder what G+ could have done to pivot after its terrible release. They had some good ideas, and usually Google takes those good ideas of a failed product and rolls it into successful products. Remember Google Wave, where you could work on a document _at the same time_? Something like the automatic generation of circles in Google Mail, and integrate some kind of generalized wall posts for Google Mail users.
- acdha 8y agoPut a UX team on it with firing authority up to the management level. I deleted my account due to the “<rando on one gmail message> is following you” push & web notification spam which could not be disabled for the first year or so – I heard so many people complaining about that. They had similar problems with sharing where a popular story would be all you saw as it was one entry per person sharing it.
- bsimpson 8y agoYou mean like Photos and Hangouts? Google+ was never a go-to social network like Facebook, but many of its features became successful products in their own rights.
- bitL 8y agoSo, does it mean they will bring "+" back to search to make it usable again?
- rlv-dan 8y ago"it has not achieved broad consumer or developer adoption" I bet G+ has more active users than your average indie developer could ever dream about. But Google is not that kind of company. It's all or nothing. World domination or shut it down and try again (or buy a company that succeeded).
- arkitaip 8y agoG+ only had 500k users and 90 percent of the user sessions lasted less than five seconds. https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/08/google-plus-hack/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/08/google-plus-hack/
- jsnell 8y agoI'm not sure that article is saying there were 500k users. It reads more like there 500k users had granted access to an app that had these permissions. It seems hard to imagine that a bug like this would be affected by whether a user is currently active or not.
- sctb 8y agoRelated discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18169027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18169027. Edit: here are some other articles providing coverage: https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/8/17951914/google-plus-data-breach-exposed-user-profile-information-privacy-not-disclosed https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/8/17951914/google-plus-data... https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/08/google-reportedly-exposed-private-data-of-at-least-hundreds-of-thousands-of-plus-users.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/08/google-reportedly-exposed-pr... https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/08/google-plus-hack/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/08/google-plus-hack/ https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45792349 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45792349 https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/google-plus-shut-down-1202972233/ https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/google-plus-shut-down-... https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/google-says-it-found-security-flaw-march-chose-not-tell-n917846 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/google-says-it-found-... https://www.businessinsider.com/google-shutters-google-social-network-after-wsj-reports-a-huge-security-lapse-2018-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/google-shutters-google-socia...
- p49k 8y agoThis is not a news article, though - it's a one-sided PR piece that greatly minimizes important points about the story and completely ignores other points (e.g. the regulation angle). You should have let another news story take its spot; there are plenty others that are not paywalled.
- sctb 8y agoSure thing, if there's a news article that provides additional information from its own sources and supersedes the Google post, we can update the link.
- p49k 8y agoMany articles fit such a description but were “duped”. Wouldn’t it benefit the site if at least one of those were allowed to exist alongside what is essentially Google’s response? The title of this article doesn’t even convey the most important point here, which is that hundreds of thousands of users had personal data leaked; instead, it conveys the idea that Google is doing something to “Protect data” which is something that people might not care to read if they didn’t know it was related to a breach.
- whoisjuan 8y agoFunny how they low-key slip through, the fact that they had an open security vulnerability for 3 years. Like "Hey, we are shutting down Google+ ... Btw, your data may have or may have not been exposed..."
- aabraham 8y agoI think that's the bigger issue here. For 3 years there was a vulnerability. And when they did find out about it, they chose not to disclose the information. Why? B/c there wasn't that many people using it. And so because of that, let's shut down G+, rather than be scrutinized about how they chose not to let it be know, that users information were available through this vulnerability.
- oculusthrift 8y agothis is the same company that threatens other companies that if they don’t patch a vulnerability fast enough, the time will release it to the public. class act
- srtjstjsj 8y agoThey patched the vuln as soon as they discovered it.
- redler 8y agoPerhaps this means someday required search terms can work +this +way +again.
- cletus 8y agoThis is Vic Gundotra's legacy and perhaps the first major strategic decision Larry Page made in the post-Eric Schmidt era and it was the design and launch of Google+ and (IMHO) it marked a turning point in the company's culture. Internal resistance to aspects of G+ was enormous. People outside the company get this idea that Google acts as some kind of singleminded (possibly nefarious) entity when "herding cats" is so often much closer to the truth. In G+'s case, the rank-and-file was largely against things like the Real Names policy yet leadership went ahead with it anyway (Vic often quipped that you didn't want everyone named "Dog fart", which was a pretty ridiculous argument). And while it may have been Vic driving this, Larry backed him so has to bear shared responsibility. Probably the worst decision made in this whole mess was (again, IMHO) trying to unify the account model. Youtube accounts have different permission models to Gmail accounts, etc. It would've been sufficient to simply link them (and not require they be linked) rather than jamming single-sign-on down everyone's throats, which really gained nothing except a lot of user backlash. The worst part of this was that the for the longest time some policy violation (like your name not being "real") could lock you out of your entire account. Whoever made this decision needed to be fired. Deciding someone's name wasn't real enough should NEVER lock you out of your Gmail (or Youtube or any other service). I was reminded of this in a thread yesterday about the disaster that was the Snapchat redesign. Leadership ignoring user feedback as people start to attribute luck to skill and vision (people have a tendency to socialize losses and privatize wins). Is this merely hubris? Because it's very reminiscent of the dismissal of internal feedback that is now routine (at Google). It's unfortunate how much Google-hate is on HN these days because I think it's largely unjustified. There are definitely some bad (IMHO) leadership decisions but the rank-and-file are still culture carriers for a lot of the things that made Google great. Still, as the Chinese say, the fish rots from the head. Disclaimer: Xoogler. All opinions are entirely personal and I don't speak for this or any other company. EDIT: TIL the origin of "a fish rots from the head" is disputed and possibly Turkish not Chinese: https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/fish-rot-from-the-head-down.html https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/fish-rot-from-the-head-d...
- yuhong 8y agoYea, I remember the debacle well. I think I had a few HN posts about it.
- ChuckMcM 8y agopackets to packets, bits to bits. I am not surprised they are killing the service, and I'm reminded of all the damage it did to the company both inside and out[1]. If there is one thing I could say I miss about not working at Google it is seeing how the organization internalizes what they did and why. These sorts of things can teach a lot of really good lessons to an organization if the retrospective is done well. I was also thinking about the recent love letter to Google that came across here about Google Cloud. In it was the admission that Google tried to hard to "copy" or "follow" AWS in the early years. Allo, Inbox, Gchat, Reader, Wave, Etc. It feels like they are trying to hard to be "amazing" and missing out on just being good at what they do. Meanwhile the beat of the jungle drums, "More ads, more ads, more ads..." continues on relentlessly. [1] Inside there were good projects that got killed because they either conflicted with or competed with G+, outside the company it seemed Google was deathly afraid of Facebook and Twitter and had no credible answer, their real names fiasco, their forcing of people to use G+ if they used other services, all of it damaged the Google brand and user trust.
- konschubert 8y agoBtw, is anyone building a google inbox clone yet?
- xd1936 8y agoSeriously. I'd argue that Inbox was _very_ good at what it did... Re-bundle email into logical groups, automatically. It's fantastic on mobile.
- ReverseCold 8y agoDidn't they move most of the inbox features into Gmail?
- panopticon 8y agoEmail bundling was one of the biggest reasons I used Inbox and that feature didn't make it over to Gmail.
- magicalhippo 8y agoUntil recently Google+ suffered from being a virtual black hole of information due to a lackluster search interface (oh the irony). In addition it had poor anti-spam and limited moderation controls, leading to almost daily NSFW images in my stream. Then recently they tried to make it better by redesigning it, and apparently gave some graphic designers free reign. This lead to a significantly worse user experience, so much so that I and many others who were still clinging on stopped using it almost entirely. That said it had some good ideas, and the signal-to-noise ratio was much better than on Facebook. I'm guessing the active communities I visited will migrate to Facebook or similar, but it won't be quite the same.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- bunsenhoneydew 8y agoI’m already starting to sunset my google usage.
- bearcobra 8y agoThe reports of Google avoiding making a security disclosure about the potential data breach out of concern for negative PR and regulatory response are very concerning and should be getting more attention
- joethebro 8y agoIt's just ridiculous that they had it open for 3 years, didn't have proper metrics so don't know exactly how many were breached, but there estimate was 500,000 and they didn't disclose??? C'mon Google, why'd you have to try and hide this...
- oculusthrift 8y agoPeople are burying the lede. They massively covered up a data breach. The same company that forces other companies to release info about their breaches or else releases the vulnerabilities themselves. Google deserves the same backlash as fb but maybe too many google employees here?
- sys_64738 8y agoSome high profile users like Linus were active on G+. I can't imagine those people using FB so what's the alternative?
- ggggtez 8y agoWho on HN is supposed to answer that? Just go ask Linus yourself.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- skywhopper 8y agoLots of people here talking about the good bits of Google+ or how they could have made it succeed. But from my POV it was just the wrong idea from the start. From what I saw Google panicked about the growth of Facebook and Twitter and tried to build a competitor. But no one wanted more social networks. And Google didn’t have a compelling story about how they were better. Instead it was just a bunch of user hostile changes—forced linking of accounts, elimination of stuff like Reader—and Google seemed to be forcing itself into parts of your digital life where it wasn’t welcome. I’m glad they’re able to admit it’s a failure now even though it took several years too long and this silly excuse about a privacy review.
- dannyw 8y agoNow imagine if Google acquired Instagram...
- mixedbit 8y ago'We believe it occurred after launch as a result of the API’s interaction with a subsequent Google+ code change.' It is very hard to believe that they can't track when exactly the bug was introduced. All code changes are tracked in the source control.
- ilovecaching 8y agoWhat's really striking about this to me is that Google didn't disclose the security vulnerability. Google is trying to cover it up by moving the ball from 'there was a breach' to 'we're shutting down G+'. This is why I'm super hesitant to be a Google fanboy. Facebook may have my social media info, but Google has my emails, all of my mobile data, access to a bunch of my assets through Google Domains, GCE etc. Scary stuff.
- oculusthrift 8y agoSadly the strategy is working. not seeing much mention of breach on HN
- lucb1e 8y agoI must have skimmed over it in the article, I only know because it's in the comments. That should have been the headline, imo. Own up to it like other vendors do. I thought Google was good with security, this is a good way to get one of the few positive points about this monolith changed.
- jacquesm 8y agoNice they spent so much time on keeping Microsoft honest. Would have been better if they aimed their sights on their own products a bit longer.
- staticassertion 8y agoWhen did "there was a vulnerability" become "there was a breach" ? I don't understand why it's being reported as a breach.
- gandutraveler 8y agoGoogle's official statement also doesn't rule out the possibility of a breach. I think the bigger issue here us that Google did not report the vulnerability/breach when they discovered it. This could be looked into by SEC.
- 8y ago
- unsignedint 8y agoGoogle+ sunsetting is sad news, as I've actually used it fairly actively. (and I have a few dozens of people I interact regularly who I wouldn't have known if not from G+!) It somewhat acted like a better version of Twitter for me, where I can write a lot more on the post, and actually engage a meaningful discussion with people. I don't know, even with relaxed character counts on Twitter that it will accommodate same use cases, and I don't like to use Facebook for this purpose as I really don't want introduce a total stranger as my friend...
- lucb1e 8y agoExactly the same here. I made friends there (not like on most other networks where you 99% add people you already know anyway) and used it for a while, and it indeed feels like a better Twitter. I'm fine with it shutting down, though. At least I no longer have to feel like I'm missing out on anything for not using a Google product (for various reasons, one of them being that it might be cancelled any minute).
- pasbesoin 8y agoPeople are finally becoming dis-enchanted with Facebook. Quick, kill Google+! As opposed to trying to take advantage of the opportunity and improve it -- fixing the bork-headed management design shoved onto it prior to external launch. Facebook has shown how it's failing its users. Google has the opportunity to make a big show and potentially market share gain by doing the opposite. But, nope. Instead, 'our market share is corporate'. Which is fine. But, it tells you a lot about where Google has been going. (And, if I were corporate Worldmerica, I'd be hesitant about investing too much good will in and dependence upon +.) As an individual Google user, unfortunately I have little hope that this unwinding will also back out other changes co-morbid with the + deployment, such as the account "unification" that allows a single "mistake" to lock you out of everything. And a single Google "mistake" in execution to haunt you across all their properties. I'm in the process of exiting Facebook, except for a mostly placeholder presence. A lot of my friends don't have the wherewithal to set up and maintain privately implemented social presences. But, we won't be switching to +, I guess. Maybe an old-fashioned bulletin board -- with otherwise unlinked pseudonyms -- will do. Back to the Future... As I think about this, maybe there is a strongly implied message in this. Assuming parts of Google still emit good will. Namely, that, these days, NO commercial network can escape the pressures -- governmental as well as commercial -- to compromise their users. We aren't making it, because we can no longer do so honestly and securely. An interesting alternative perspective. (And, we're even less inclined than Mark and Co., to try to ride herd on all the nut jobs out there.)
- drewfrank 8y agoA Google+ private community allows social, collaborative photo sharing photos with friends with login required. This is not supported in Google Photos! With Photos shared albums you can select people with whom to share, but those people just get an email with a secret token embedded in a URL -- aside from trusting your non-technical friends not to accidentally leak this URL, there is no way to know who is viewing the photos or remove access from specific individuals. I really hope the Photos team upgrades their shared album permission model now that the alternative in Google+ has been sunsetted.
- buserror 8y agoI used G+ a lot a few years back, and I did dozens of posts of logs of projects and so on... and then one day I wanted to refer to one of them to someone and discovered you can't search you own posts. That immediately stopped me posted anything. It's almost write-once, read never sort of medium. It's too bad, there were a few good ideas and so on, and I had a bit of traction of a few good 'circles' but I'm pretty sure that like me, everyone else stopped. Now, I have to figure out a way of re-importing all that content to something else, probably homebrewed this time. IN FACT I've just checked, and G+ seems to have forgotten every single post I've made, but one. https://plus.google.com/+MichelPollet https://plus.google.com/+MichelPollet EDIT: Now the posts are back. I must have been archived on CDs or something ;-)
- splonk 8y ago> you can't search you own posts They keep moving the functionality, but I can still get to it on desktop. Search for something, "Posts" tab, change "From Everyone" dropdown to "From just you".
- inferiorhuman 8y ago> I used G+ a lot a few years back, and I did dozens of posts of logs of projects and so on... and then one day I wanted to refer to one of them to someone and discovered you can't search you own posts. I left Google Plus after Google Search kept turning up private posts that I had opted to remove from search.
- jefftk 8y agoFor what it's worth, I see many posts at https://plus.google.com/+MichelPollet https://plus.google.com/+MichelPollet (Disclosure: I work at Google, on other things)
- ssijak 8y agoTry google takeout for g+ and see if your posts are there
- ReverseCold 8y ago
- hateful 8y agoIMHO Google+ failed for one reason. At least it's the reason it failed for me. There was no way to post something on someone else's feed. When I used Facebook, this may have been the #1 thing that I used it for (and events). If I saw something I thought a friend would enjoy or made me think of them, I'd post it on their wall. This is drastically different than sending a message or e-mailing in that my friend's friends will also see it. In Google+ (at least when I tried it), there was no way to perform this action. So I never used it again.
- tomjen3 8y agoMy family is using Google+ to coordinate and share internal news (because do you really want to friend your parents on Facebook?). Given that they are going to close this down for us as consumers, what is our best alternative? I would rather not have to have the headache of running and maintaining software myself, but what options do you recommend? Or do we just have to bite the bullet and set up the Shaftoe e-mail list?
- qznc 8y agoYou can pick any of the open source clones and probably find managed hosting for that. Your family Twitter? https://masto.host/ https://masto.host/ Your family Facebook? https://www.oxwall.com https://www.oxwall.com
- jpindar 8y agoDo you recommend any of those clones in particular? I might have a good use for that.
- carapace 8y agoWhat happens to the old content? (Also, small thin sans-serif grey body font means you hate your readers' eyes.)
- lucb1e 8y agoI liked Google+, but this is one of the reasons why I stopped using it. I think it was around the time they cancelled Google Reader. By randomly cancelling products that are still used by lots of people, they're dooming other products before they even launched.
- vocatus_gate 8y agoI'm going to get downvoted for this, but you don't have to state "IMHO" or any variation of that in your posts. You are the one posting it; we know it's your opinion. It just adds grammatical clutter and noise to an otherwise well thought-out post. IMHO
- Doctor_Fegg 8y agoIn many cultures, voicing equivocation, doubt, or similar provisos is a social norm when expressing your opinion. It certainly is in British English, for example. Don’t assume everyone on HN has US social norms.
- srtjstjsj 8y ago"IMHO" is an American Internet English term, and using it is a US social norm.
- dang 8y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18169738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18169738 and marked it off-topic.
- robmiller 8y ago> consumer Google+ What is our relationship to Google? Are we really consumers of Google? Content creators? Ad targetees? Impressionees? Folks? Lemmings?
- anticensor 8y agoAll of them.
- Latteland 8y agoThe post says they don't have evidence of anyone using the api that leaked all that personal info - let's not ignore that: name, picture, birthdate, email was just open to the world for a friend lookup! Second, they don't clarify if this is "evidence of absence" of a leak. Do they not monitor that api call but they don't have any reason to expect a problem? Or is it that they monitor it and no one used it in the "bad way"? I'm afraid it must be the first - if they had evidence no one ever use the api, they'd be explicit about it.
- joethebro 8y agoThey mentioned the reason they weren't able to know was because they only kept the logs for a short amount of time.
- zelon88 8y agoGoogle is wrapping a breach disclosure in a press release for new services and you're all glossing right over the breach. Just sayin'...
- imhelpingu 8y agoThe damage control we're seeing is almost as blatantly immoral as a quasi-government monopoly appointing itself as the internet police and then neglecting to disclose its own breeches to the public. Google is evil.
- 0x54D5 8y agoI am so done with Facebook, Instagram, and Google. I deleted my Facebook and Instagram three weeks ago and haven't looked back. I removed Chrome and Chromium from all my computers. No, I don't want to sync using your servers. If you let me host the sync servers myself like Mozilla does I'd consider it. If my friends want to talk to me they can make an account on my privately hosted Matrix.org chat server and use the open-source Riot.im client. It works flawlessly and I don't have to worry about being spied on. Next is Gmail. I find the new UI atrocious. I'm keeping my eye on Maps alternatives as well. The faster I can get rid of all this crap the better off I will be.
- OnlyRepliesToBS 8y agowow the censors got to this one quick
- bliblah 8y agoAs much as I hate the Facebook hegemony; I can only say "Good Riddance". Me and my circle of friends tried it out on release and to this day it still a UX nightmare in how it presents/displays posts. It's a classic case of google dipping their toes in a service and if they don't reach critical mass in 3 months just ignore it until it becomes a liability and shut it down quietly. I would love to hear if they ever pushed updates for it or just had some intern maintaining the code up until now.
- Angostura 8y agoPersonally, I think the headline "Google hid major Google+ security flaw that exposed users’ personal information" is probably the better one. https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/8/17951914/google-plus-data-breach-exposed-user-profile-information-privacy-not-disclosed https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/8/17951914/google-plus-data...
- sintaxi 8y agoI'm starting to think "security flaw", "bug", and "data breach" has become a cover for giving data to people you are not supposed to. Facebook had a "data breach" on September 28th that compromised 50 Million people. Interesting how this is all happening right before midterms. Could these companies be trying to impact the elections and they need plausible deniability? Announcing an exploit seems like an easy way to cover ones ass.
- Ajedi32 8y agoThe blog post explains that, and gives their reasoning: > Our Privacy & Data Protection Office reviewed this issue, looking at the type of data involved, whether we could accurately identify the users to inform, whether there was any evidence of misuse, and whether there were any actions a developer or user could take in response. None of these thresholds were met in this instance. So basically, they decided that because: 1. The data exposed wasn't very sensitive (name, email address, occupation, gender, age, etc) 2. They couldn't identify any specific users whose data was leaked 3. They couldn't find any evidence that the bug was actually exploited 4. There were no actions you could take to remedy the problem (no software to update, no passwords to change, no CC numbers to revoke) that they weren't going to notify users about the bug. Still, I would have appreciated at least a blog post or something so if I started suddenly getting more spam emails or something I could at least identify the source.
- eel 8y agoThis is the big surprise to me: > Finding 2: People want fine-grained controls over the data they share with apps. While I personally 100% agree, I would have guessed that the vast majority of Google users (i.e., non-HN crowd) wouldn't care about fine-grained controls. I wonder if they found that some people passionately care and most didn't care one way or another. In other words, perhaps the people that click/tap through permissions prompts are going to continue clicking through, but the change could win back some privacy conscious consumers.
- ajb1 8y agoNot that this will (or should) surprise anyone at all, but I noticed (perhaps more so than normal) that many of the top headlines about this more than subtly imply that the shutdown was a result of the potential data exposure, rather than the lack of popularity. https://news.google.com/search?q=google%2B&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen https://news.google.com/search?q=google%2B&hl=en-US&gl=US&ce...
- peterwwillis 8y ago....did Google just admit to patching a security hole and not announcing it for months? Isn't this what they continuously harangue other organizations for on Google's Project Zero blog? Yep: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/google-says-it-found-security-flaw-march-chose-not-tell-n917846 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/google-says-it-found-... "As many as 438 applications might have used the API. Google maintains that it didn’t uncover evidence developers were aware of or abused the security flaw, or that profile data was misused. However, it acknowledged that it has no way of knowing for sure because it doesn’t have “audit rights” over its developers and because it keeps a limited set of activity logs." (https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/08/google-security-breach/ https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/08/google-security-breach/) Google wrote: “Our Privacy & Data Protection Office reviewed this issue, looking at the type of data involved, whether we could accurately identify the users to inform, whether there was any evidence of misuse, and whether there were any actions a developer or user could take in response. None of these thresholds were met in this instance.” -- From 2016: "The search engine company publicised a critical Windows bug 10 days after informing the software firm about it" (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/01/google-microsoft-bug https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/01/google-mi...) From February: "Microsoft misses Google's 90-day deadline, so Google has published details of an exploit mitigation bypass" (https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-security-google-exposes-how-malicious-sites-can-exploit-microsoft-edge/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-security-google-exp...) And then: "For the second time in a week, Google reveals another unpatched Windows 10 vulnerability" (https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-bug-google-again-reveals-code-for-important-unpatched-flaw/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-bug-google-again-re...) In August: "Google discloses vulnerability in Fortnite launcher that allowed possible malware installation" (https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-08-27-google-discloses-vulnerability-in-fortnite-launcher-that-allowed-possible-malware-installation https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-08-27-google-dis...) Again in August, reporting Samsung bugs: (https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-project-zero-heres-the-secret-to-flagging-up-bugs-before-hackers-find-them/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-project-zero-heres-the-...): "Two terms irked her and simply clashed with Project Zero's practices. "You MUST hold off disclosing the vulnerability in reasonable time, and you MUST get Samsung's consent or inform Samsung about the date before disclosing the vulnerability," said Samsung. "In some cases, Samsung may request not to disclose the vulnerability at all." Again, this clashes with Project Zero's insistence on disclosure."
- Twirrim 8y agoFrom my perspective, the one thing Google got _really_ wrong with G+ was their APIs. When G+ was launched, tools like TweetDeck were heavily used for interacting with Twitter, Facebook and the like. All of a sudden along came a service that had no APIs by which you could post to it. Something you needed to specifically go and open a separate application for. If they'd made public read & write APIs from the start, they could have picked up a massive initial user base as people used the tools they were already actively using. You've got to either: 1) Offer an amazingly compelling product with features that provide _significant_ reasons for people to compel people to use you 2) Go to where people are, and bring them to you. G+ failed on both scores. It had good features, but they weren't _that_ compelling.
- zmmmmm 8y agoYep, people keep rewriting the history, but I remember it exactly: there was enormous enthusiasm and hype around G+. Developers, tech enthusiasts everywhere were "queuing around the block" to get on board with it and to stick it to Facebook. Then Google did two things: - announced no API access - real names policy debacle Between those two things they completely destroyed all good will and within months it was essentially dead. I actually think it was a larger turning point that made developers significantly more cynical about Google overall.
- Twirrim 8y agoThey could have survived the real names policy debate, if the API had been there. But that was one hell of a double-whammy.
- Macha 8y agoI especially found it interesting how supporters portrayed it as an issue that people would get over, but in the end G+ never took off and YouTube users nearly revolted over it and they also found it did nothing to improve discourse on YouTube even when many users relented.
- mindways 8y ago
- allthecybers 8y agoSo glad my Google+ was deleted long ago and subsequently deleted all my Google products. Not sure why people give these crappy ad companies (Google, FB, etc) all their data.
- xivzgrev 8y agoDear god google is going to make me accept each permission individually? That sounds awful as a user. I think it's a dark UX pattern to get developers to ask for less shit.
- ggggtez 8y agoIt sounds to me like it'll be more like what they did on Android. The dark pattern is not giving the option to deny a permission: "Accept everything, or you can't use it". This is the opposite of a dark pattern.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- oh-kumudo 8y agoThe only surprise is that it takes them such long time to shut it down. It is clearly failed project; it is an internet ghost town; very very few care about it. It almost felt like the only reason it last to date is to protect some high profile executives' self-esteem, while being the living relics of Google's strategic mistake tapping into the social land.
- javchz 8y agoI wonder what this will affect SEO practices. I remember one of the things google had made as a small factor for search, it's the integration of Google Plus in your website. Like using the plus button. Like what happens if I remove all google plus code related from my sites right now? My guess it's that in the short term will have some kind of negative impact, but I don't know.
- HereBeBeasties 8y agoWhen did you last see a plus button?
- _qbxp 8y agoI posted this on the other discussion related to this, but would love to get feedback here. ----------------- I can understand this position, but I'd be curious what your thoughts are on how to best (I realize there is no perfect) keep your data private from snooping employees, hackers, or law enforcement. I've thought about this over and over, and it's hard to come to a solid conclusion about keeping personal data safe (in this context I mean emails and files you may store in the cloud, not browsing history, social media posts, etc.). There are so many options with downfalls for each, and I'm not a security expert. So every time I get excited about trying a new service geared towards privacy, or setting up my own instances, inevitably somebody points out the terrible pitfall in it and I get discouraged. 1. Don't use the internet or internet services, period. <- Not tenable for most of us. 2. Use services who market themselves as geared towards privacy. <- Can't actually trust those services, even with E2E encryption because they could be running different code from what you think they're running. 3. Use regular cloud options, but stack stuff on top - VeraCrypt volumes or Cryptomator with Google drive, GPG for email, etc. <- Really difficult to setup and have a nice reliable way of accessing data on mobile/desktop/etc. No security audits on a lot of the open source software. 4. Host your own services - i.e. a Nextcloud 14 instance on EC2 with an S3 backend, then use client-side E2E <- Difficult to make sure you set the service up in a safe way, and not even a fraction of as much resources in auditing code as, say, a giant corporation. 5. Spread what you do out over multiple services - FastMail for email, DropBox for cloud storage, Standard Notes for notes, etc. <- A real pain. I know there will never be a consensus on this, but I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on the best way to keep my personal files and notes personal to me. Let's assume I'm not a target of any spy agencies or whatnot, but I want to make it very, very difficult for anyone to read my person notes and files but me.
- tenebrisalietum 8y agoEncryption, to be done right, always has to ultimately be the end user's responsibility. So there is one solid conclusion but it requires work and discipline and is therefore unpopular. Encrypt before you send/upload, decrypt after you receive/download. If you transmit or receive unencrypted data you are placing trust in someone else and there is no way to really avoid that unless you created and control the chain end-to-end. So you can use Google Drive, etc., just encrypt your data before uploading if it needs to be secured. A 7-zip file protected with AES256 is decently convenient (from a PC) and secure.
- koolba 8y agoHow (if at all) does this impact "Login with your Gmail" and those APIs? They started off separate but were subsequently combined into one common package.
- reading-at-work 8y ago"90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds." Oof. Good on them for finally admitting it, but who knew the data would be even harsher than G+'s most vocal critics.
- amelius 8y agoWhy can't they just let the software run on a spare set of servers with minimal maintenance for those who still want to use it or publish it as open source?
- FartyMcFarter 8y agoOpen-sourcing may not be viable if its code depends on a lot of internal tech. "Minimal maintenance" is often harder than it sounds, especially when privacy and security is involved.
- spunker540 8y ago"...the Profiles of up to 500,000 Google+ accounts were potentially affected. Our analysis showed that up to 438 applications may have used this API" "This data is limited to static, optional Google+ Profile fields including name, email address, occupation, gender and age." It is also including a lot more than what they said above: The json per profile is as follows: { "kind": "plus#person", "etag": etag, "nickname": string, "occupation": string, "skills": string, "birthday": string, "gender": string, "emails": [ { "value": string, "type": string } ], "urls": [ { "value": string, "type": string, "label": string } ], "objectType": string, "id": string, "displayName": string, "name": { "formatted": string, "familyName": string, "givenName": string, "middleName": string, "honorificPrefix": string, "honorificSuffix": string }, "tagline": string, "braggingRights": string, "aboutMe": string, "relationshipStatus": string, "url": string, "image": { "url": string, }, "organizations": [ { "name": string, "department": string, "title": string, "type": string, "startDate": string, "endDate": string, "location": string, "description": string, "primary": boolean } ], "placesLived": [ { "value": string, "primary": boolean } ], "isPlusUser": boolean, "language": string, "ageRange": { "min": integer, "max": integer }, "plusOneCount": integer, "circledByCount": integer, "verified": boolean, "cover": { "layout": string, "coverPhoto": { "url": string, "height": integer, "width": integer }, "coverInfo": { "topImageOffset": integer, "leftImageOffset": integer } }, "domain": string } (from https://developers.google.com/+/web/api/rest/latest/people https://developers.google.com/+/web/api/rest/latest/people)
- mcv 8y agoThis sucks. The vibrant RPG community on Google+ is in uproar about this and looking for a suitable alternative. (MeWe looks like the most likely candidate at the moment.) Google+ started out as the best social network. Unfortunately Google has taken every opportunity to ruin it, remove popular features, force ill-considered integration, remove that integration once people are used to it. Lately the spam filtering has been utterly broken, alternating between leaving painfully obvious spam, and marking and hiding comments from people you were following. It seemed like it was an experimental testbed for them where they didn't care if people were using it. Despite all of that, we hung on because of the great communities, the people we got to know, and because frankly there's no good alternative. It really seems to me it shouldn't be too hard at this point to design a sane social network. Google+ had all the elements, but refused to apply them correctly. Facebook is a horrible mess of privacy violations with no control over your feed (though G+'s control often doesn't work as intended either), and besides, there's family and co-workers there. Twitter seems designed for screaming into the void. Tumbler and Instagram don't seem to be my thing.
- stevenwoo 8y agoMeet in real life to RPG or online somehow? How about a private subreddit?
- mcv 8y agoReal life is a very different use case. Better, but also a lot harder. I've never actually tried reddit, but my impression is that it's more of a traditional forum, but lots of them. At the moment, G+ers seem to be gravitating towards MeWe.
- stevenwoo 8y agoOne can have a private, invite only subreddit and one can choose all the moderators of the subreddit. I think that if you use reddit's native mobile or web page css they push ads on you so I don't use either of those.
- russdpale 8y ago
- vincentmarle 8y agoGoogle+ always reminds me of my favorite management quote: "The single biggest failure of leadership is to treat adaptive challenges like technical problems." [1] [1] https://www.sgaumc.org/files/files_library/technical_vs_adaptive_challenges.pdf https://www.sgaumc.org/files/files_library/technical_vs_adap...
- askvictor 8y agoSo it's remaining as a product for enterprise customers. Does this mean every enterprise instance will have it's own instance of g+, or will they be able to interact with other enterprises? And will I be able to move my profile from domain to domain if I move companies?
- trynewideas 8y agoIt's going to be very interesting to see where all the tabletop gaming people land. G+ got a lot of pickup in that hobby because the early API blended tools, like Hangouts with overlays and easily segmented discussion groups, that worked well with online tabletop gaming. Roll20 integrated well with G+ (at least until Google killed the Hangouts API in April 2017). The early adopters reached enough of a critical mass that others used it solely because of who was already there, making it an actual social network for at least that purpose. Much like when Reader folded, G+'s critical mass is going to spread out to a half-dozen other places and refragment. And like Reader's exit, there's a vacuum right now for someone to jump in with something better and charge a nominal amount for it.
- coding123 8y agoI survived the 4 years they blasted Google+ signups at me without signing up once with my account. Luckily that dissipated after a while and things got less annoying every time I signed in. I imagine most people clicked "I agree" and created their public page. But it was really awful for the rest of us that didn't want that.
- mindgam3 8y agoRIP. Like so many of Google’s high profile efforts (anyone remember Wave? Glass, etc), a bunch of good ideas and great tech brought down by an utter failure to understand the human element/social psychology angle. Google+ was dead in the water from day one. You don’t beat Facebook at social by building a slightly different product with some cool ideas like Circles. Going for feature parity was a mistake. Instead they should have tried to identify a niche where Facebook was failing (say, intimate private sharing, or the antithesis of the narcissist fest) and build up a loyal core of rabidly passionate users, then slowly expanded from there. Kind of like how Facebook started out as a platform for elite universities, then high schools, then workplaces, then the world. This approach would have been hard to sell internally at Google given the pressure to release a “Facebook killer.” But people always forget that the way to build a platform is to start by nailing a niche use case and then expanding. Even the Apple App Store only came to dominate because it was based on a hit product, the original iPhone. Anyway, kudos to Google for finally admitting defeat. Hopefully management learned something and they hire some people who understand humans so that their brilliant engineering capacity doesn’t get wasted again.
- ryanwaggoner 8y agoWhy do you need to beat Facebook at social at all? Just focus on what you’re good at, it’s not like Facebook is going to suddenly dominate search.
- sdegutis 8y agoAll large enough corporations expand until they can read email; those that don't are subsumed by ad-hoc implementations of 50% of Common Lisp. - Paul McCarthy (1956)
- mindgam3 8y agoBecause social is/was such a fundamental aspect of the human experience. As proven by facebook’s continued explosive growth in the years since Google tried to compete. Not to mention FB’s ability to affect markets, attitudes, and politics at global scale. It would have been better if they had competitors to keep them honest.
- Ricardus 8y agoI still don't understand why G+ never caught on. For me FB is wayyyy too busy with panes and club, and groups, and businesses, and news, and election interference, and the bird site at 140, and now at 280 was just not enough. I always found G+ to be the perfect balance between the two. It really does boggle my mind that no one likes it. The only thing I can think, is Google didn't find a way to appeal to peoples' egos enough, since that's what social media seems to be about for most people.
- knodi 8y agoGood riddance
- kolderman 8y agoCan I search for +hotdogs again now?
- a-dub 8y ago...but but without Google+, how are Google employees going to publicly announce their intentions to leave Google?!?!?
- RandomGuyDTB 8y agoF
- CM30 8y agoGoogle + was one of those ideas that probably would have done significantly better had Google not been so forceful at getting people to use it. Yes, I get that it's hard to overcome the network effect thing and that fighting Facebook/Twitter/whatever head on would have been tough, but giving people the option to sign in/link accounts probably would have done a lot more for adoption and caused less of a backlash than Google's actual methods did. 'Use this service/product because you now have to in order to access something you like' is not a good way to endear your company/service/product to users, and usually has the exact opposite effect to whatever you were intending.
- giancarlostoro 8y agoIf it wasn't for this I think they could of had a healthier community, and maybe if they had named it better. Google Plus is such a terrible name, I can't help but think to whoever named YouTube Red (which is now Premium, could of been Plus...) but I guess Google as a whole is fragmented just like Microsoft and their Windows team are. It's a pain to manage so many diverse teams with differing directions. I loved the idea of Google Plus, but it died when they were trying to normalize all my data into one giant blob of cash.
- CM30 8y agoYeah, the name probably didn't help much either. Google reminds me of Nintendo in how bad they are at coming up with catchy names for things.
- misiti3780 8y agodoes anyone have a clue how much money they spent building g+ and how many developers have to find new jobs (presumably within google) because of this?
- 51Cards 8y agoThis does make me sad as I am one of the few that still uses G+ fairly regularly. There are still a lot of quality feeds and I've enjoyed seeing that content without all the crap Facebook wraps its content in.
- probe 8y ago"90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds". I'd say let's have a moment of silence for Google+, but that is clearly too generous
- ravenstine 8y agoTo me, the worst part about Google+ has been the fact that Google services started forcing you to use it. Like I'd click on some sort of account settings tab on YouTube, and suddenly I'd be redirected to a different website and my first reaction is always "what the hell is this crap?" Worse yet, there was always an irritatingly huge delay between changes I made to my Google+ "shadow profile" and my profile on YouTube. Hopefully this will put an end to that nonsense?
- Kostchei 8y agoSo my joke about "I put it on Google+ so it's basically a secret" is coming true.
- diogenescynic 8y agoI kind of think they wanted to shut Google+ down anyways and the data breach just gives them a convenient excuse. I doubt Google+ was growing at all.
- osxrand 8y agoI wonder if we get to use the + modifier in Google Search again.
- chiefalchemist 8y agoIf only Google had integrated Wave into YouTube, they would have ruled the world. In YT they already had a massive user-based; (for a time, not sure if it's still true) the second most searched search engine in the world. In Wave they had threaded conversations. That is a communications UX that was closer (than Slack et al) to natural / traditional human conversations. Toss in some of the better G+ features (e.g., Circles) and they likely could have been a contender. The problem (I suspect) was they saw FB as "competition" instead of stepping over and beyond FB, as FB had done to MySpace and Friendster. Further proof that Google isn't a product company, but an algorithm company (per Thiel, trying to hide from regulators)?
- revel 8y agoPhew, hopefully all the developers working on Google+ enjoy their new project working on a currently unnamed chat program. We haven't had a new one of those in checks calendar 172 days.
- exikyut 8y agoLet me guess - everyone's old posts will disappear? I can imagine Google doing it that way. "The majority never used our platform, so we'll abuse the few that did (and really liked it) by only giving them X amount of time to notice and save their data." If Google+ becomes archived my jaw will hit the floor - and I'll be very appreciative.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Animats 8y agoSo many "social" systems have gone down the same path to collapse: - Create a way to communicate with your friends. - Try to monetize it by adding feeds of ads and irrelevant junk. - Users get annoyed. - Double down on the ads. - More users get annoyed and leave. - Usage shrinks. This used to be called "pulling a Myspace". Since then, Twitter, Google+, WeChat in India, and Facebook have followed Myspace's lead. It works out OK for the founders if they cash out around step 3.
- dredmorbius 8y agoI've been a long-time critic of G+. But it's because I've also been a long-time user of the service, signing on in July of 2011, and continuing to use it, often through gritted teeth, and desperately hoping something better would come along, and yet ... nothing really has, at least not that I've been aware. There's a long litany of mistakes and errors (and many successes) in the service, and I might eventually sit down and write my own post mortem of what I thought went right and wrong -- I've written a few, most of which still stand, though the cooption of media, social and otherwise, for propaganda and disinformation purposes could be expanded on. There are several groups formed to look at exodus options, presuming people want to go to any one platform (something I'd actually somewhat discourage). It may be that the age of centralised social networks is over, though self-hosting and federation also have considerable challenges. Or, maybe, we go back to other models. Hacker News is an exemplar I've referenced more than a few times. It's not a personal network the way G+, FB, Twitter, or a personal blog are, but it has a (usually) high level of discussion of an interesting array of topics. Thanks in large part to active moderation and flying slightly under the radar. If you're on G+ and want to discuss next steps, stop by Google+ Mass Migration: https://plus.google.com/communities/112164273001338979772/ https://plus.google.com/communities/112164273001338979772/
- OptionX 8y agoThank god. I remember when google+ first came out, in what being shove down our throats at every google service.
- grizzles 8y agoNo other platform had as much clickspam / clickfraud stuff as G+. Every time I looked at my feed there were 10+ pictures of fake hot girl videos that clicked off to random sites. That G+ itself was such a player in click fraud, I'm surprised there wasn't more hay made about this before.
- MisterOctober 8y agoI didn't see this sentiment expressed elsewhere in this comment section, so I'll express it : G+ was overrun by vapid, spam-crazy self-promoters and for me, it quickly got too annoying to use [say, in 2012 or so]. Every time I logged in, I had to winnow them out of the list of connection requests, which was a time-eater especially if I'd been to a large gathering or something lately. "Lessee... Dave Stevens... did I meet him at that thing last week or something?... no, just another 'rock star' to delete..."
- p_b_r 8y agoAny indication if they'll open source it?
- p_b_r 8y agoAny indication if they'd be willing to open source it?
- fiatjaf 8y agoBring back Orkut!
- nikolay 8y agoNo wonder! Google with their notorious interviews false to test one fundamental software engineer trait - common sense! Most of their products are short-sighted and much neglected. I won't ever invest a second looking into another Google offering! Keep off! They have zero respect for your time invested in their toy products!
- timonus 8y agoFINALLY
- yspeak 8y agoGoogle essentially saying it's too expensive to comply with heightened privacy laws for the little benefit it gives them. the high costs far outweigh the benefit. Great example of overregulation killing a business.
- kabacha 8y agoMakes you wonder - if not the first comer advantage would have google made a name for itself? Every product google puts out is an arguable failure and their search engine and email client aren't particularily amazing either - just they were there first. Maybe they should start getting back to the roots - try to secure that first comer advantage by launching experimental products. Oh wait google glass, inbox... For a company that is praised for biggest software talent they sure fail to deliver anything of value to the medium time and time again.
- daveguy 8y agoThey weren't first in email or search. There had been decades of email clients and at least 5 years of web search engines.
- kabacha 8y agoThey kinda were first decent ones and the competition wasn't really there. Gmail offered hundreds of megabytes of space when other providers offered 5.
- est 8y agoThe legendary Facebook killer, by the name of G+, here's a list of products it successfully killed: - Google Reader - Google Buzz - iGoogle - Picasa Web Albums - Google Talk - Google Latitude - Google Wave Now the latest victim was added to the list: - Google+
- newscracker 8y agoI consider myself lucky to know enough to avoid putting personal information with Google and its properties. But Google is the main platform for many people for many things of a personal nature, and they also end up giving it a lot of information through Android. So any breach has a huge damage surface. Google+, with all its missteps, was one of those products that even a company with Google's money, resources and people (like Luke Wroblewski) that couldn't get better at all. I liked the concept of "circles" as opposed to the concept of "lists" on Facebook that most people don't know about or use. The only mistake that Google+ did was not copying Facebook on its features. That increased the barriers to adoption and made the product almost worthless. Even something as useful as creating an event was buried in a classic G+ interface, and in the new interface it's buried under profile. Treating vanity URLs as very scarce commodities and letting people live with long unspeakable links, not implementing a groups like functionality well (called "Communities"), and many other things could've been handled if they just copied what Facebook did and took the good lessons from those. It's sad that Google+ would be gone soon, though it could've been a viable competitor for Facebook as far as centralized, ad supported platforms are concerned. But it's good that an abandoned product gets a quicker death, and that's exactly what Google+ was — an abandoned zombie product trying to figure out whether it was alive or dead. I'd take this as one less commercial social network to worry about, and await the adoption of a decentralized social network.
- O_H_E 8y ago> Instead of seeing all requested permissions in a single screen, apps will have to show you each requested permission, one at a time, within its own dialog box....you will be able to choose to share one but not the other. I really felt the need for Android like permission model for my Google account, where you can reject a permission request and still use the app. Much appreciated change, that allows more refined control over account privacy.
- phyller 8y agoShutting down consumer Google+ is the least important part of this post. Hardly anyone used that. The privacy changes they are making for everything else are much more important. More granular control of app permissions is a big deal. Overall I'm not sure how to feel because I didn't realize how bad it was. How many apps have required access to my contacts for legitimate reasons, and I wasn't aware I was providing access to our interaction data? > Finding 4: When users grant SMS, Contacts and Phone permissions to Android apps, they do so with certain use cases in mind. > Action 4: We are limiting apps’ ability to receive Call Log and SMS permissions on Android devices, and are no longer making contact interaction data available via the Android Contacts API.
- simonebrunozzi 8y agoAnother one bites the dust... I can easily imagine that in 100 years Alphabet would have been rebranded as Google, and only one single service will be generating ~100% of revenues. There will also be a software graveyard with the 1,000+ dead projects that google launched and then shut down years later.
- learnstats2 8y agoPerhaps one of the reasons that it was difficult to engage with Google+ is because of this outcome: that Google/tech corporations are known to kill products that are not completely successful, even if there are engaged users who will be affected by this shutdown.
- kriro 8y agoI want to applaud Google's general philosophy of "try stuff, shut it down if it doesn't work" but I do wonder if this isn't bad for the brand. They've been pretty "ruthless" when it comes to shutting down things that some people still use (or at least that's the image). I think in the back of their minds, possibly subconsciously, people like me probably make decisions against other technology they provide even if it is in a completely different category and pretty much never going to shut down. For example, I'm not sure I haven't decided against their cloud services because my subconscious remembered the reader being shut down and thought "they better not shut down some part of the infrastructure I rely on".
- elvirs 8y agoas a Facebook addict who used it for 10 years straight im surprised i don't miss it at all, going 10 months strong.
- yason 8y agoTo me, it seems that they just found a good reason to kill a product born to fail without losing their face.
- tinkerteller 8y agoNumber of project failures and cuts under Larry Page is just amazing. Normally you would expect that founder CEO insist on long term vision and loves to go after big bets. Under Larry Page, X had been cut. Boston Dynamics was lost. Robotics effort was shutdown. And now G+. After all these time no one at Google's highly paid smartest on Earth visionaries were able to experiment, try something new and continue fight for social. This is at the time FB is bleeding heavily, is losing trust and people are willing to try something new. Google is one case where it looks like outside traditional CEO Eric Schmidt did much much better not only in operational excellence but also long term big bets including maps, gmail, YouTube, Android etc. Larry Page has nothing comparable to show for in his 7 years of leadership. This might be one reason: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-09-13/larry-page-is-a-no-show-with-google-under-a-harsh-spotlight?srnd=technology-vp https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-09-13/larry-pag...
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoAfter all these time no one at Google's highly paid smartest on Earth visionaries were able to experiment, try something new and continue fight for social. What? They spent a decade on G+, launched it with much fanfare, annnd it just didn't pan out. Sure, they didn't drive it down Google users' throats as aggressively as they could have (via e.g. Search, Chrome or Gmail) but that really wouldn't have helped them - Facebook didn't grow like that either. Social networks need to grow via organic growth, via word of mouth. Anyway they're cutting their losses finally instead of indulging in the sunk cost fallacy, I say good riddance. You also mention Maps, Gmail, YouTube and Android but these are all highly popular - and profitable - services and have been since the start.
- tinkerteller 8y agoNo, they left it to rott. No innovations, no new strategy, no new leadership, no new bold moves. Nothing. If G+ was startup outside Google we would have ripped it off for not even pretending to compete. Social is absolutely the most important space for Google, even more so than cloud. FB is eating up large chunk of their ad money and putting biggest chunk of content out of their reach. For a company out to organize world's information, this is unthinkable. And this is a company with $100B in bank, accumulation of largest talent pool, ability to attract the best. And it's not that FB is perfect and strongest at this point. There is no "cutting losses" in tech when product category is this important. It takes years of struggle, experimentation, patience and competition to win. They gave up within an year after G+ release, left it on "maintenance mode" and now finally kissing good bye. To me, Google has lost its charm as company that makes big bets and goes all-in until they win. Now they are company which does half-assed product and if they don't see traction right away, they cut off the oxygen and then just kill it. There is little or no reflections, learning and applying it to do course corrections. After Larry Page arrived at the scene and flew out to his Caribbean island on extra-extended vacations, the company has failed to produce any big new product category. Eric Schmidt was able to start new product category virtually every year and become undisputed leader in it. That wasn't coincidence or luck but sheer drive to win. For example, in maps they had to invest huge amount of money with multi-year milestones and constant innovations to displace existing players.
- hacknat 8y agoI don't know that I am going to trust google's consumer product offerings anymore. Inbox became central to my life, now this. I am now going to operate under the presupposition that a google product is not a reliable product.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- shbm 8y agoGoogle+ was not at all a bad product. It had some functionality that other networks didn't have at the time. I used to browse through Google+ because of Linus Torvalds and the Linux community. I think that if Google had decoupled it from the Google platform and developed G+ as an independent entity within the umbrella, things would have been different.
- bad_user 8y agoI see a lot of rationalization here about why Google+ didn't take off, related to feature set, Facebook, etc. Let me throw wood on fire ... the reason Google+ is a failure has nothing to do with any of its features: 1. they killed Google Reader for it, which was more successful than Google+ ever hoped to be, forever tarnishing Google's reputation 2. they had the Real Name Policy ... by the time they reversed and apologized for it, the damage was already done 3. they shoved Google+ down on everybody's throats, like YouTube users, exposing their real identities in the process There are no other reasons that matter. Google+ could have been at least at Twitter's scale. Twitter still understands their audience, but Google never did.
- AJRF 8y agoIs there any way for EU citizens to hammer Google with GDPR over this? Isn't one of the stipulations of GDPR that a company must disclose privacy violations of this nature?
- hysan 8y agoI wonder if we'll get the + operator back in search now. Google broke a lot of things across their ecosystem with the release of Google+. I feel that the effect on search kickstarted the trend of taking away search control from the user and isolating us in bubbles (circles).
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- alias_neo 8y agoThe main thing I want to see come out of this is the reinstatement of + as the inclusive operator in a Google search.
- bovermyer 8y agoSeveral of the communities I belong to are moving to MeWe as a replacement. Several of us had never heard of it before, but the privacy controls and business model surprised the hell out of me. I'm impressed so far.
- stuartd 8y agoI hear up to a dozen people may have been affected by this.
- DavidCanHelp 8y agoThe timing is too amazing. I can't help but wonder if my experience somehow contributed to management's decision: https://medium.com/@david.liedle/is-machine-learning-at-google-falling-apart-googles-system-doesn-t-believe-i-m-a-person-88c92159c979 https://medium.com/@david.liedle/is-machine-learning-at-goog...
- garfieldnate 8y agoI didn't use the social aspect much, but the ability to +1 a URL was awesome. With the browser plugin installed, I could immediately tell what kind of traction a site was getting and, in the case of technical information, if the contents were considered valid and useful by a large number of developers. They silently killed this feature about a year ago, and it showed [1] in the reviews for the Chrome plugin. I went a little crazy when the feature went away because I didn't realize how much I had relied on it. Not having it has made the web less useful for me. [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-%201-button/jgoepmocgafhnchmokaimcmlojpnlkhp?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-%201-button...
- sundvor 8y agoI knew G+ was dead when hardcore porn was spammed to software groups and there was just no care factor. Google can filter this perfectly on image searches, but not on their social networks? It's a shame, I really liked the concept of circles. Where am I going to get my Buzz now?