Google+

~ the story ~

Google+ (officially Google Plus, often written G+) launched on June 28, 2011 as Google's strategic response to Facebook. After several previous social network tries (Buzz, Wave, Orkut), Google decided the only solution was to build a single social network and drag every Google user into it whether they wanted to be there or not.

On April 2, 2019, Google shut down the consumer version of Google+, citing low engagement and a security vulnerability, though the corporate (G Suite) version persisted briefly as "Currents" and was finally retired in 2023. The shutdown announcement was met by users with a level of indifference that was, in itself, the eulogy.

~ stats ~

~ circles ~

Google+ had a interesting idea: Circles. Instead of a single "friends" list, you organised your contacts into circles; "close friends," "family," "coworkers," "people I met at conferences." When you posted, you chose which circles saw it.

The concept was correct. Most of us have multiple social contexts and would prefer to share differently with each. Facebook's single feed forces us to perform for the entirety of our social graph at once. Circles was a real try at solving this.

The execution was confusing. The drag-and-drop circles UI was visually slick but cognitively demanding. Most users never learned which circles their content was going to. Many shared with the wrong circle by accident. Some shared with no circle and had nobody see anything. The feature that should have been G+'s core differentiator instead became its source of paralysis.

~ hangouts ~

Hangouts, group video chat, launched as part of Google+ in 2011 and was one of the good products Google has ever shipped. Multi-party video, screen sharing, integrated Google Doc collaboration. For about three years, Hangouts was the best video conferencing product available to consumers.

Google then proceeded to migrate Hangouts to a separate service (Google Chat? Google Meet? Google Duo? all of these, in sequence, separately, with confusing branding) over the following decade. Each migration broke things. By 2024 the consumer experience of "video calling on Google" was a maze. Hangouts deserved to live. Google buried it under brand confusion.

~ the youtube comment union ~

On November 6, 2013, Google forced YouTube users to attach their accounts to Google+ in order to comment on YouTube videos. The integration was meant to "improve comment quality" by tying comments to real identities.

The result was a six-week revolt. Top YouTubers (PewDiePie, Jenna Marbles, dozens of others) made angry videos. A petition asking Google to undo the integration accumulated over 240,000 signatures. The user experience was awful: comments were threaded weirdly, replies appeared out of order, YouTube creators lost their existing comment management tools.

The integration was partially rolled back in 2014. Google quietly de-emphasised the Google+ requirement, though by 2015, YouTube comments were once again basically unattached to Google+. The whole episode was a public lesson that you cannot force a social product onto users by hostage-taking adjacent products.

~ cause of death ~

Google+ died for a few reasons:

Apathy. Most users created an account because Google forced them to. Most never used it after the first day. The activity numbers were always inflated by counting any Google user as a "Google+ user."

The 2018 API breach. A security flaw exposed about 500,000 user records. Google had known about it for months and not disclosed it. When the Wall Street Journal broke the story in October 2018, Google announced the consumer shutdown within twelve hours. The breach was a public-relations excuse for a shutdown decision that had already been made internally.

The Larry Page exit. Page had been Google+'s internal champion, tying executive bonuses to G+ adoption metrics. When he stepped back from active CEO duty in 2015, the internal pressure to make G+ work disappeared. The product had no champion left.

~ the void ~

Circles, conceptually. We still have the same problem, multiple social contexts, one feed, and no major platform has solved it. Twitter Lists are the closest cousin and are barely used. The unsolved problem persists.

The high-quality long-form discussion communities. Google+ Communities, in their last few years, hosted some good niche discussion communities, photography, board games, academic philosophy. These migrated to Discord, Reddit, Mastodon, or simply dispersed. Some did not survive the migration.

The interface aesthetic. Google+'s 2011-2013 UI, clean white backgrounds, lots of whitespace, large profile photos, generous typography - was the original "Material Design" before Material Design existed. Many feel it was, for a window of time, the best-looking social interface anyone had ever shipped. Most modern social UIs descend from G+'s aesthetic, even if no one credits it.

~ epitaphs ~

"i made a g+ account in 2011 because google forced me to. i posted twice. one of the posts was 'is anyone here?' nobody replied. the second post was 'i am leaving google+.' two people +1'd it. i felt seen for the first time on the platform.", e.k. 36

"my g+ photography community had 8,000 members and seven years of weekly critique threads. when google shut it down i exported what i could. most of it is now a folder of html files on a hard drive. nobody reads it."; i.ö. 47

"the youtube comments union of 2013 is the most powerful protest movement i have ever participated in and it was about being forced to use google+. we won. we are still proud.". m.r. 39