UPDATE (February 4, 2019): Google Users Panic Over Google+ Deletion Emails: Here’s What’s Actually Happening
UPDATE (February 2, 2019): Google’s Google+ Shutdown Emails Are Causing Mass Confusion
UPDATE (February 1, 2019): If Google Cared: The Tool That Could Save Google+ Relationships
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For weeks now, I’ve been pounding on Google to get more explicit about their impending shutdown of consumer Google+. What they’ve finally written today on a G+ help page (https://support.google.com/plus/answer/9195133) demonstrates clearly how little that they care about G+ users who have spent years of their lives building up the service, appears to put a lie to key claimed excuses for ending consumer G+, and calls into question the degree to which any consumer or business users of Google should trust the firm’s dedication to any specific services going forward.
The originally announced shutdown date was for August. Then suddenly it was advanced to April (we now know from their new help page post that the official death date is 2 April 2019, though the process of completely deleting everyone from existence may take some months).
The key reasons for the shutdown originally stated by Google were API “security problems” that were obviously blown out of proportion — Google isn’t even mentioning those in their new announcements. Surprise, surprise:
“Given the challenges in creating and maintaining a successful Google+ that meets our consumer users’ expectations, we decided to sunset the consumer version of Google+. We’re committed to focusing on our enterprise efforts, and will be launching new features purpose-built for businesses.”
Translation: Hey, you’re not paying us anything, bug off!
And as I had anticipated, Google is doing NOTHING to help G+ users stay in touch with each other after the shutdown. In other words, it’s up to you to figure out some way to do it, boys and girls! Now go play on the freeway! Get lost! We just don’t care about you!
Since there’s nothing in Google’s new announcement that contradicts my analysis of this situation in my earlier related posts, I will herewith simply include for reference some of my recent posts related to this topic, for your possible perusal as you see fit.
I’ll note first my post announcing my own private forum that I’ve been forced to create — to try provide a safe home for many of my G+ friends who are being unceremoniously crushed by Google’s betrayal of their trust. Given my very limited resources, creating a new forum at this time was not in my plans, but Google’s shabby treatment of G+ users forced my hand. No matter what else happens in my life, I promise never to treat users of my forum with disrespect and contempt as Google has:
A New Invite-Only Forum for Victims of Google’s Google+ Purge
https://lauren.vortex.com/2019/01/05/a-new-invite-only-forum-for-victims-of-googles-google-purge
And here are some of my related posts regarding the Google+ shutdown fiasco, its impacts on users, and related topics:
Google’s G+ User Trust Betrayal Gets Worse and Worse
https://lauren.vortex.com/2019/01/29/googles-g-user-trust-betrayal-gets-worse-and-worse
An Important Message from “Google” about Google+
https://lauren.vortex.com/2019/01/22/an-important-message-from-google-about-google
Boot to the Head: When You Know that Google Just Doesn’t Care Anymore
https://lauren.vortex.com/2019/01/14/boot-to-the-head-when-you-know-that-google-just-doesnt-care-anymore
Why Google Is Terrified of Its Users
https://lauren.vortex.com/2019/01/06/why-google-is-terrified-of-its-users
Why I No Longer Recommend Google for Many Serious Business Applications
https://lauren.vortex.com/2018/12/20/why-i-no-longer-recommend-google-for-many-serious-business-applications
Can We Trust Google?
https://lauren.vortex.com/2018/12/10/can-we-trust-google
The Death of Google
https://lauren.vortex.com/2018/10/08/the-death-of-google
As Google’s continuing decimation of user trust accelerates, you can count on me having more to say about these situations as we move forward. Take care everyone. Stay strong.
Be seeing you.
–Lauren–
If I was a business owner, considering the track record of Google for support their products in many cases, I would seriously not want to put the future of my business in their hands.
What will happen to youtube comments posted while google + was required for them to exist?
That is an interesting question. My assumption would be that any G+ comments still tied to YouTube video watch pages will vanish over time as Google purges G+ from existence, the way Stalin purged Trotsky.
> calls into question the degree to which any consumer or business users of Google should trust the firm’s dedication
It’s fair to call Google onto the carpet for this, but it’s generically good advice to NOT entrust others to build your brand. For all of the “Follow us on” “Check in at” “Be the Mayor of” services, companies and mere humans alike should remember to build your own brand FIRST. Don’t put someone else’s logo on your product, use your free email for a company name, entrust Blogger to host your business or whatever – build and control your own brand!
The complexity of these systems today are such that most relatively non-techie business people just don’t have the time or skill sets to “roll it themselves” in the manner that you’re suggesting.
I found the Google Takeout options for Google+ to not be that great.
For instance:
* When you select G+ circles, you just get a few vCard files that just have a name and a link to the persons G+ profile.
So they aren’t really that useful.
* The Google+ Communities posts are just an HTML file with links to all the communities posts, which after April 2nd will be useless.
There maybe other issues too that I haven’t noticed.
I just did another export and the Google+ Community posts are included in this archive.
It’s weird that the export I did on March 10th just had links to the posts on G+ but the export I did today does contain the posts.
Both times I did select to download the Google+ Communities.
I guess Google must have changed the way the posts are done in the last couple weeks.
Which could mean that people who used Google Takeout early ended up with a less complete archive then those that did it a bit later.
This along with the short notice that Google+ was ending seems to imply that Google rushed into closing Google+ quickly and made mistakes doing so.
There are a wide range of reports of inconsistencies and errors (missing items, etc. — some reported by Takeout, some not) relating to this process. I’ve been doing a bunch of takeouts in the hope of keeping these holes in the data to a minimum overall.