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How and why google failed and its future
1. wphold.com http://wphold.com/how-and-why-google-failed-and-its-future/
How and Why Google+ Failed and Its Future
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Despite Google’s effort to make Google+ a competing product with Facebook and Twitter, it has drastically failed. A
platform, which once hoped to change the way people will share their lives online, is on its way out.
I would have never understood the phenomenon if I had not read Jim Collins international bestseller “Good to Great”
in which he explains how great businesses and products transition from a mere ‘Good’ to ‘Great’.
Anything can be made ‘good’ with hard work and intelligence but to transition it from that ‘ good’ to
‘great’ is the real mysterious journey.
Unfortunately, Google+ could never make that transition. It launched with a bang. An ‘ invitation only’ social network
that everyone wanted to join at least check. Majority of users got disappointed right at first impression.
Google+ site was too slow probably because only one data center was allocated to it in start. It had nothing new to
offer and a clumsy user experience, which I have failed to understand till now. And worst of all, non of your friends
were using it. Only these few reasons were enough to repulse majority.
Larry Page was himself deeply involved in Google+ and wanted the entire company to push the project to
success. Reportedly, he even announced monetary benefits if Google+ achieves its goals. Even today, he is not
accepting failure of Google+.
Google always talks about how many people joined Google+ and not about how many are actually using it. Kevin
Anderson has shown the actual statistics in this image below.
2. As of today, it would be right to say, Larry Page including the other senior leadership, are responsible for driving
Google+ into a wrong direction. Vic Gundotora, who made it, had already left the company.
The biggest mistake is with the concept behind Google+. It’s a confused Hybrid.
Google’s primary source of revenue is its search advertisement. By introducing a social platform, they wanted to
supplement their search and advertisement business. Google+ had an under the hood aim of providing actionable
insights for better serving of advertisements.
In short, it was never solely made for its end-users, rather it was a tool to harness Google’s existing
infrastructure.
Keeping everyone’s opinion aside, I hated Google+ due to following reasons.
The site design was pathetic
It was and it is still slow
None of my friends are actively using it
It is complex to understand – especially the concept of circles
It is at least, not better than Facebook in any way
When Google could not find a direct success route for Google+, it started to take shoulder from its other established
apps. The biggest blunder is the compulsion of Google+ for comments on Youtube and Google Play. Even the
founder of Youtube felt bad about the idea.
3. Google’s blind efforts didn’t stop here. They introduced concept of authorship for all content published on web.
Author’s Google+ profile used to appear in search results but it has been discontinued. Moreover, they also started
considering the number of +1s as a ranking factor… weird!
Google tried to trap every element of the web inside Google+ circle but luckily unfortunately, all went in
vain for Google.
There was a photo editing app known as picnik. It was my all-time favorite for editing photos online. When Google+
launched, the entire functionality of picnic was transferred inside Google+ as a built-in photo editor, which no one
uses now. And sadly, picnic was taken down!
After having enforced so many strategies, it is a miserable condition for Google. Their entire share in social media
market is way beyond Facebook and Twitter. In fact, Google+ is now on count down to be buried like its so many
previous projects namely Orkut, Buzz, Wave, Google Reader etc.
To supplement their failure with Google+, authorities at Google have recently announced a shift in their strategy with
Google+.
What’s the Future of Google+
In my opinion, Google+ is not going to die soon. Not because of its bad performance but due to the fact that it is a
bonding link between all services provided by Google. It is, at least, offering us a way to sign-in to every Google
service with one profile.
Google is not going to settle with their failure. They will definitely burry Google+ one day in future and will try to make
a dent with something else. Lets see what they do.
What you have to say about your experience with Google+??