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To give a competition to Facebook and Twitter, Google made its fourth attempt by bringing Google Plus in the year 2011. But the social platform failed vigorously and got shut down on 2nd April 2019.
It failed to impress the people even after associating with the highly-popular YouTube community.
Till the end of the year 2011, analysts already started writing about the obituaries. But in 2018, Google decided to shut the site when they discovered about the inappropriate data.
Google Plus was launched in June 2011 and was just an invite-only platform. But later in the same year, it was opened up for the public.
The social networking site had many features such as to post photos and update the status on individual feeds.
However, Google also said it a "social layer", which is designed to work for all its services.
The key features of the Google Plus included-
>It could sort friends into “Circles”
>Make group video calls with the help of “Hangouts”.
Google said that millions signed up within a few weeks after the launch but the problem was that only a few were using it.
Paul Tassi wrote in an American business magazine after few weeks of the launch of G+ “I click on my newsfeed and see tumbleweed blowing through the barren, blank page”. It’s a vast and empty wasteland, full of people who signed up but never actually stuck around to figure out how things worked.”
Matt Navarra, a social media consultant, said, “Google+ was destined to fail from day one”.
He also added “Issues with an unwieldy and changeable UI [user interface], being the latecomer versus giants like Facebook, a disjointed user experience, and rumours of internal disagreements about how Google+ would be leveraged” and all these affected the G+.
Following a strict real-name policy, Google banned users who used pseudonyms or screen names and also prevented them most often from using other Google services like Gmail.
G+ deleted the pages of the brands and businesses
Especially, going after the brands and businesses that set up their profiles, Google deleted their pages.
But later, the G+ accepted their mistake and decided that the businesses can set up a G+ profile.
But those who used to sign up for a glance would often get confused with whatever they had seen.
The Facebook had “likes” button while Twitter had “Favourites button” but the G+ had a not to easy branded “Plus One” button.
No one ever said, “If you liked this post, make sure you’ve Plus-Oned it”. Isn’t it funny!
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To increase the connections, Google “integrated” with Gmail and in 2013 G+ also associated with the famous YouTube community.
Because of the association, whoever wanted to comment on YouTube must first have a Google+ account and then sign in.
Due to this move, major video makers got angry because they realized that their success was being used to spread the struggling social network.
Also, the person who wanted to download or view the Google Play Store must first have a G+ account and must sign in to access it.
All of a sudden, the G+ revived again because of the activities like the YouTube comments, “liked” videos and also app store reviews were automatically cross-posted on the G+ account.
Google said that there were 500 million users of the G+ but the question arises is that how many were using it?
BBC News technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones, in the year 2011, wrote, “I look at the profiles of the family and friends I invited to join and find that their presence in Google’s shiny new world ranges from sparse to non-existent”.
“The big question is whether the 750 million people who currently use Facebook and the 100 million who are signed up to Twitter will decide they need to move – or need yet another social network in their lives.”
Bye Bye Google+ šš» #Google shuts failed social network Google+
— Fingertip Solutions (@FingertipSol) April 2, 2019
Launched in 2011 and competing with Facebook and Twitter, it was Google's fourth attempt at a #SocialNetwork
But the platform failed to win people over ā¹ļø #TuesdayThoughtshttps://t.co/Dz9S653sOV
The bad days of the G+ started when the founder Vic Gundotra resigned from the company.
After he left, then the associations slowly started to depart from the G+ such as the Hangouts and Photos later started to run as independent services.
Apart from this, Google disconnected the G+ from YouTube and Google Play Store which made the video and app makers happy.
After struggling too much, G+ in 2015 made a design to focus on the communities but it also failed to attract the people.
At last, Google had to shut down the platform because two data breaches were found.
In 2018, it accepted that there were bugs in the software due to which private information of the 52 million members was leaked and accessed by the third-party developers.
All of a sudden, Google said that it was happy to see that few peoples were happily using the platform.
Google said in a blog “The consumer version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement – 90% of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds”.
Google+ has now been remembered on the Google Cemetery website that holds a record of the search giant’s failed projects.
Naeem Nur created the site “to make my friends keep on working on their new ideas, even if they fail”.
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