News Courtesy of Independent.co.uk:
In June 2011, the world’s biggest internet company launched what it hoped would become the world’s biggest social network. “Online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it,” Google’s senior vice president for engineering Vic Gundotra said in a blog post introducing Google+, and within a month more than 10 million people had signed up.
Seven years later it would be caught up in an embarrassing leak that exposed people’s personal information – embarrassing not only for the vast amount of information lost, but just how little people cared about what was once one of Google’s flagship projects.
Ryan’s Take 
Has it really been seven years? It seems like Google+ has been around for a much shorter time. There aren’t many failed projects in Google’s portfolio, but this one certainly has to be the biggest. I find it stunning that Google, with all their might and prowess, couldn’t enter the social media market and even make a ripple.
I signed up for Google+ some time ago and have barely used it. For Precise Online Management, it is only used to share original blog content snippets. It’s pretty much been a bust for me both on a personal and professional level. How could this happen?
I think the design and functionality never really clicked. It feels clunky and antiquated navigating around and searching for profiles and businesses. At best, it was a half-hearted attempt by Google to enter the social media arena. Maybe they got greedy and believed no sector was too big to conquer.
Apparently, there is a small and loyal community of Google+ users in mourning. I read in another article that some 18,000 people signed a petition requesting Google to keep G+ open. In the grand scale of social media, that number is extremely weak. Does this mean that Google is permanently exiting this sector? Maybe. I don’t think it is out of the realm of possibility for them to acquire another social media startup that catches fire.
Similar to how they bought YouTube and turned it into a mega-empire, it just takes the right medium and dollar amount to turn an acquisition into a major profitable machine. What that next big thing might be, I have no idea.
