Inside the Failure of Google+

[DEAD7]

An article at Mashable walks through the rise and fall of Google+, from the company's worries of being displaced by Facebook to their eventual realization that Google services don't need social hooks. There are quotes from a number of employees and insiders, who mostly agree that the company didn't have the agility to build something so different from their previous services. "Most Google projects started small and grew organically in scale and importance. Buzz, the immediate predecessor to Plus, had barely a dozen people on staff. Plus, by comparison, had upwards of 1,000, sucked up from divisions across the company." Despite early data indicating users just weren't interested in Google+, management pushed for success as the only option. One employee said, "The belief was that we were always just one weird feature away from the thing taking off." Despite a strong feature set, there was no acknowledgment that to beat Facebook, you had to overcome the fact that everybody was already on Facebook.

 

[Data-Hawk]

I know people don't like to hear this, but outside of Google's search engine and probably Gmail. Most of googles products fail.

I read an article somewhere that went over this, but it doesn't matter because Google's Search engine is like a stream of gold that they can always dip into to fund other things.

 

[Regular_P]

I know people don't like to hear this, but outside of Google's search engine and probably Gmail. Most of googles products fail.

I read an article somewhere that went over this, but it doesn't matter because Google's Search engine is like a stream of gold that they can always dip into to fund other things.

Android?

 

[Data-Hawk]

Android?

Yeah I forgot to put android in there. But I'm not sure or how much they actually profit from Android,I know they mainly use Android as a way to push their existing products ( gmail etc ) and collect users data.


Plus I think they bought Android from a startup.

 

[Lazy Migrant]

I know people don't like to hear this, but outside of Google's search engine and probably Gmail. Most of googles products fail.

I read an article somewhere that went over this, but it doesn't matter because Google's Search engine is like a stream of gold that they can always dip into to fund other things.

Google Maps is fire too.



I think the problem with Google+ was how they launched it. Yall remember how they tried to make it exclusive and It was invite only? To me it gave off a little ish vibe in the beginning that made me less interested in joining.

They went from that, to eventually trying to lowkey trick people to join when they signed up for youtube.

You win some you lose some I guess.

 

[thekingsmen]

CISA: the dirty deal between Google and the NSA that no one is talking about

By Evan Greer and Donny Shaw

5.9K14.5K62

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One of the things that civil liberties activists like to lament about is that the general public seems to care more about Google and Facebook using their personal data to target advertising than the government using it to target drone strikes.
The reality is that both types of abuse are dangerous, and they work hand in hand.
It’s hard to find a more perfect example of this collusion than in a bill that’s headed for a vote soon in the U.S. Senate: the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, or CISA.
CISA is an out and out surveillance bill masquerading as a cybersecurity bill. It won’t stop hackers. Instead, it essentially legalizes all forms of government and corporate spying.
Here’s how it works. Companies would be given new authority to monitor their users -- on their own systems as well as those of any other entity -- and then, in order to get immunity from virtually all existing surveillance laws, they would be encouraged to share vaguely defined “cyber threat indicators” with the government. This could be anything from email content, to passwords, IP addresses, or personal information associated with an account. The language of the bill is written to encourage companies to share liberally and include as many personal details as possible.
That information could then be used to further exploit a loophole in surveillance laws that gives the government legal authority for their holy grail -- “upstream” collection of domestic data directly from the cables and switches that make up the Internet.
Thanks to Edwards Snowden, we know that the NSA, FBI, and CIA have already been conducting this type of upstream surveillance on suspected hackers. CISA would give the government tons of new domestic cyber threat indicators to use for their upstream collection of information that passes over the Internet. This means they will be gathering not just data on the alleged threat, but also all of the sensitive data that may have been hacked as part of the threat. So if someone hacks all of Gmail, the hacker doesn’t just get those emails, so does the U.S. government.
The information they gather, including all the hacked data and any incidental information that happens to get swept up in the process, would be added to massive databases on people in the U.S. and all over the world that the FBI, CIA, and NSA are free to query at their leisure. This is how CISA would create a huge expansion of the “backdoor” search capabilities that the government uses to skirt the 4th Amendment and spy on Internet users without warrants and with virtually no oversight.
All of this information can be passed around the government and handed down to local law enforcement to be used in investigations that have nothing to do with cyber crime, without requiring them to ever pull a warrant. So CISA would give law enforcement a ton of new data with which to prosecute you for virtually any crime while simultaneously protecting the corporations that share the data from prosecution for any crimes possibly related to it.
There’s little hope for ever challenging this system in court because you’ll never know if your private information has been shared under CISA or hoovered up under a related upstream collection. In a particularly stunning display of shadyness, the bill specifically exempts all of this information from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act or any state, local, or tribal law.
The members of Congress who are pushing hardest for the bill, unsurprisingly, have taken more than twice as much money from the defense industry than those who are opposing it. These politicians claim that CISA is intended to beef up U.S. cybersecurity and stop foreign hackers from ruining everything, but, as their funders in the defense industry know well, it will really just give the government more data and create new opportunities for contractors to sell their data analysis services.
The world’s cybersecurity experts say that CISA won’t stop cyber attacks, but it will create a gaping loophole for law enforcement agencies from the NSA right down to your local police departmentto access people’s private information without a warrant. Systems like this have chilling effects on our willingness to be ourselves and speak openly on the Internet, which threatens our most basic rights.
The Internet makes a lot of good things possible, but it also makes it possible for corporations and governments to exploit us in ways they never could before. The debate over CISA is not about hackers, or China, or cybersecurity -- it’s about whether we want to further normalize ubiquitous monitoring, warrantless surveillance, and unfettered manipulation of our vulnerabilities, or if we want to protect the Internet as a promising platform for freedom and self expression.
Greer and Shaw are members of Fight for the Future, a nonprofit dedicated to a beneficial use of the Internet.

 

[ejthompson23]

I wanted Google+ to work soooo bad so I didn't have to go back to Facebook ...I deleted my Facebook in November of 2011 and never been back...never made a IG either...Google+ was supposed to get me back in the social media game ...I found the coli tho so I'm good ...

 

[Domingo Halliburton]

Yeah I forgot to put android in there. But I'm not sure or how much they actually profit from Android,I know they mainly use Android as a way to push their existing products ( gmail etc ) and collect users data.


Plus I think they bought Android from a startup.

Over 90% of Google's revenue comes from advertising. They have two advertising programs called Google AdWords and Google AdSense. When you search something on Google it shows ads related to your search query (sponsored by Google AdWords advertisers). So, when you click on it --- Google makes money.

 

[hashmander]

i'm not a social media type. never had a facebook acct, no twitter, no IG, none of that shyt. the only thing google needs to be successful at as far as i'm concerned is: android, search, gmail, drive, bookmarks and youtube.

 

[AB Ziggy]

I know people don't like to hear this, but outside of Google's search engine and probably Gmail. Most of googles products fail.

I read an article somewhere that went over this, but it doesn't matter because Google's Search engine is like a stream of gold that they can always dip into to fund other things.

I don't thing they search engine will protect them for long, especially now that iOS 9 will automatically block ads and Windows 10 will come default with Bing.