6 Reasons Why Google+ Couldn't Survive Being Axed

After a seven year run, Google is shutting down its Google+ social network. The announcement to shut down Google+ comes after the discovery of a bug that was present for more than two years leading to the exposure of data from millions of users to external developers.

But even before this decision, the social network was already dying, here’s why;

Google+ was just another bad decision

Google+ wasn’t the first bad decision the company made. Google has had a wide network of failed projects that have had to be shut down. Google Buzz was launched in 2010 and retired in 2011, Google Friend Connect was launched in 2008 and retired in 2012 and Orkut was launched in 2004 and retired in 2014. So while the company makes some good projects, bad ones also come along.

The Facebook effect

Google+ was created just out of need to counter Facebook which it failed to do.

7 years ago, Facebook became very popular that it pressured the Google team into creating their own social network as a means to keep Google relevant to users. When it launched, there wasn’t any clear differentiation from Facebook and the team didn’t have a clear plan for it.

Facebook continuously became popular as users sought it as a much simpler social network as compared to the complex Google+ that was confusing to most. Many found sharing posts on Google+ confusing. And Google+ 'circles' feature was complex. The users were supposed to create circles of people such as friends and family to share only circle-specific posts. But these circles were one sided and didn’t allow others to share back. This was the exact opposite to Facebook’s feature that connects people together through allowing sharing among-st themselves. Google’s approach wasn’t any fun.

Failure to offer something genuinely new

For any good businessman looking to beat their competition, the strategy is always to create something new or capitalize on a small segment whose needs aren’t being fulfilled. Google+ went the other way and chose to go head to head with Facebook.

Lack of a mobile presence

Social network sites like Twitter and Facebook offered users a very neat mobile browsing experience which Google+ failed to deliver. Facebook and Twitter provided mobile sites for users displaying lower quality images or no images at all allowing those on limited data plans access to their accounts which wasn’t the case with Google+ whose high-resolution photos made it ideal for desktop. Mobile for Google+ was said to be more of an afterthought than a carefully planned service.

Exit of its creator

A few years after the launch of Google+, its creator also exited Google. In 2014, Vic Gandotra who was serving as the senior vice president social for Google exited the company. This came as a surprise to most and there wasn’t a smooth succession plan. This created another hole in the social network.

The Bug

In this data era, every user demands safety of their data and any failure to protect serves as a failure to provide a service. Google+ suffered a bug that exposed data for millions of its users. This simply robbed it of the users it had left.