Bye Bye Google Plus

Back in October 2018, Google announcedthat Google Plus would be closed in August 2019 due to a data leak that affected 500,000 users. However, Google Plus is now closing its doors even earlier than planned. Following another and much more serious data breach that became known in 2018, the platform will be shut down at the beginning of April 2019.

The bug, which allowed app developers to access users' names, email addresses and information about their occupation, gender and age, was discovered in March 2018 and fixed immediately. However, the gap had already existed since 2015 and affected the private data of millions of users. An unforgivable scandal.

Google Plus has been clinically dead for a long time and the official decision to close it comes as no real surprise - the product graveyard of its parent company Google is growing.

When a company this big fails, you can stand by and laugh gleefully - we'd rather take the time to learn from Google's mistakes.

Right from the start, many people wondered whether we really needed another platform to share banalities. Accordingly, many blog posts with titles such as: "What is Google+ and do I have to join?" circulated on the net and were intended to give us answers.

On the surface, Google Plus competed with Facebook, Twitter and many other more or less popular platforms. The real purpose of Google Plus was a kind of social layer that created a connection between a large number of Google products. For example, Google linked the display of companies in the search results with photos, route maps, opening hours and testimonials that it took from the company pages on Google Plus.

In August 2011, Google's CEO at the time, Eric Schmidt, explained that Google Plus was not a social network, but an "identity service": "...G+ was built primarily as an identity service, so fundamentally, it depends on people using their real names [...] The internet would be better if we knew you were a real person rather than a dog or a fake person. Some people are just evil and we should be able to ID them and rank them downward."

In this respect, Google Plus was an attempt to create an online ecosystem that eliminates the need for passwords within the Google universe and helps to better identify people and verify content.

The fact that no one understood the actual purpose of Google+ is due to the incorrect and unclear communication from Google itself and led to yawning emptiness in the feed.

Learning: Communicate clearly what your product or platform stands for - the simpler the better.

After Snowden, NSA, Cambridge Analytica and GDPR, the identification and enrichment of private data in profiles has become an increasingly critical undertaking.

The Guardian had already reported on data leaks in June 2013, based on top secret documents stolen from the NSA by Edward Snowden. These circumstances, coupled with the end of funding for the NSTIC (National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace) in 2015, led to the end of Google Plus as an "identity service".

After the serious data breach in 2015, which was not officially discovered and rectified until 2018 and affected the private information of 53 million users, Google was ultimately forced to shut down the service completely.

Learning: Your customers' data and data security are your greatest asset. Make your website GDPR-compliant and communicate transparently how you handle customer data and why you need it. Your customers only give you their most private data because they place their trust in you - don't abuse it! 

Google's official reason for the final closure was simply: "...it was not worth the effort, considering the meager use of the product."

The beginning was so promising: 88 days after its launch in June 2011, Google Plus already had 40 million registered users. By 2017, over 3 billion profiles were networking on the platform worldwide.

The platform recorded 400 million active users in 2018 (comparison of active users: Facebook 2 billion, Instagram 800 million, Twitter 300 million) - including not only private individuals, but also many companies.

However, 90 percent of interactions lasted less than five seconds, explained Google. A behavior that we can understand all too well. Submitting an SEO-rich post and a quick check to see if anything is happening - with the quick realization that there is still silence - takes no longer than a few seconds.

The positive effect of shares, ratings and posts on the Google search ranking was the only reason for many - and admittedly also for us - to use Google Plus.

Social networking? Out of place - that's what Facebook is for!

As a social platform, Google Plus has clearly fallen into the all too familiar "chicken or egg" problem: no users, no content - no content, no users.

Learning: Focus yourself and the functions of your offer on what offers your users real help and added value.

Why does a platform like Snapchat go from 0 to 100 in the spotlight and then establish itself as one of the most popular social media platforms?

One possible answer is constant innovation and thus constant investment. 

Google Plus has probably not lacked investment due to its parent company. Innovation, on the other hand, has been sorely lacking. In its eight-year lifespan, no innovations worth mentioning were added - due to data security problems, new features such as Google Authorship were even quickly deleted more and more frequently.

The human touch was also missing: a "Like" on Google Plus was simply a "+", there were no features worth mentioning apart from posts and groups. The result: boredom among users, who preferred to spend their time on innovative and lively platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

The success of a platform stands and falls with constant innovation and further development. The process of developing a great platform or website is never finished, as the interests and needs of users are constantly changing. Google Plus has stood still right here and watched other platforms pass it by at high speed. 

Learning: Be innovative and continuously adapt your product or platform to the needs of your target group. The competition never sleeps and will steal any of your customers that you don't actively retain.

The consumer version of Google Plus is being shut down under the name "Project Strobe". "We are shutting down Google+ for consumers. [...] Google+ is better suited as an enterprise product where co-workers can engage in internal discussions on a secure corporate social network." (Official message from Google).

The handful of active Google Plus users can download their data at Takeout.google.com. Google Plus will continue to exist for corporate communication. Company accounts can communicate internally via Google Plus and share information. It remains to be seen whether the service will be used by companies after the major breach of trust.

So now it's time to say goodbye to the social network that never really was one. A handful of users and media companies will certainly miss Google Plus and will have to revise their content and news strategy. However, with the otherwise low engagement rate of Google Plus, few people will even notice the loss. Without a clear vision of purpose and direction, Google Plus bumbled along and never really established itself. A mistake we can all learn from.