There was a time when you could get the smartest people at Google to do
the stupidest things you could imagine by getting Yahoo to do them
first; thankfully that era ended – only to be replaced by an era in
which every stupid thing Facebook did became a bucket-list item for
Google management.
The peak of this was when Google set out to create a social network and
tasked every googler with making it a success. The company decided to
call this network Google+, and decided that the longstanding, widely
used plus-sign (which historically was used in search queries to mean
“must have” as in +cory +doctorow) would be unilaterally repurposed for use in its social network.
Googlers’ bonuses were tied to their ability to integrate Google+ into
every product Google offered, creating an ever-tightening noose around
Google users who had no interest in using G+.
To make matters worse, Google decided to ape Facebook’s
privacy-invading, nonsensical “real names” policy, insisting that every
user use their legal name and putting Google in the unenviable position
of deciding (for example) when a trans person could stop using their
deadname, or when an indigenous person’s name was “real” enough for use,
or when people fleeing domestic violence could use an alias.
By the time Google+ rolled out, there was already nascent discontent
with Facebook. Google+ offered all the downsides of Facebook, but with
fewer of the people you wanted to connect with.
Years later, G+ is a sad also-ran. What’s more, the company just
discovered an extremely grave bug in the system – – that would have
allowed for serious privacy violations. Though the company says it has
fixed the bug, it’s taken the opportunity to simply shut down G+ for
“consumers” (the service will persist for enterprise users, who
apparently use it).
In the product’s obituary, Google wrote that Google+ “has not achieved
broad consumer or developer adoption, and has seen limited user
interaction with apps.”
One bright spot in all this: the defect in Google+ was discovered
through “Project Strobe,” a serious privacy and security audit of every
Google product.
