Is Google+ Set To Be Another Abandoned Google Project?
Google+ was supposed to be a big new social platform to beat Twitter and Facebook at their own game. To ensure new users would come to the nascent platform, Google tied users in directly or in other situations just attempted to. But it hasn't completely worked.
Authorship
The authorship incentive where writers would use their Google+ profile with their real name and real profile photograph linked to new posts written was intended to make the quality of the search results more reliable. You'd more often than not seen the author's name below and their profile photo to the left of the link to their latest blog post when searching for something where they'd recently written a post. Trust was supposed to be established with this system and authors would benefit from higher ranking and more traffic for the sites they either owned or just wrote for.
That was 3 years ago. Just recently Google dropped the requirement for a real name and real image in Google+ accounts. You can now choose any name you want – Daffy Duck if you wish – and publish like that. Google also stopped using the profile photos of Google+ users with their authorship program (one has to think that one action was related to the other). Authorship still shows up in Google search results, but less often than it once did.
Photo Albums
Picasa Web Albums was part of the popular Picasa feature set for people who wanted to quickly publish their own album of photos to share with family. Never really intending them to be shared much beyond their small circle of friends and family, Picasa worked well. It was never trying to be Facebook albums and the users didn't really want it to be. It was more like Flickr. Then it was renamed to Google+ Photos with its own mobile app to go with it.
Commenting
To comment on YouTube it used to be easy enough (YouTube is now a Google-owned web property). But more recently you'll need to link up your Google+ account if you wish to comment. If you don't have a Google+ account, well that's just too bad. You don't get to comment. Users are hamstrung. This was not a popular move.
Reviews
Do you want to add a review of a restaurant pinned on a Google Map? You'll need a Google+ account to do that. If you use an Android app and you wish to post a review of your experiences with it, you'll also need a Google+ account to do so.
Google and Google+
Google+ is pretty integral to Google, so much so that it's tough to know where Google ends and Google+ begins. If you want to create a Google account, you'll also need to open a Google+ account at the same time. The Google notification bar has a label for Google+ and with their app launcher, Google+ is what you'll place your eyes on first. It's really tough to avoid the Google+ service.
Google+ Spokesperson Leaves, Google+ Loses Direction
The spokesperson for Google+ was Vic Gundotra. He put it plainly 2 years ago that it was the next iteration of Google, think of it as Google 2.0, he seemed to be saying. The user base was there, so they were busy “upgrading them” to what they felt was the next version of Google: Google+. Since this time, Vic Gundotra has left Google altogether.
Information is no longer forthcoming from Google about the number of Google+ users. A recent Google I/O keynote almost didn't even mention Google+, a service that was the next big thing just 2 years back. The decision to reduce the real person aspect of Google+ so that real names are no longer required for accounts is a big change for the platform. But more changes have been happening to different apps and web apps too.
Google Hangouts video transmissions no longer need an associated Google+ account to make a call on video. Some wonder whether Google+ Photos which before was called Picasa Web Albums will end up changing now to simply Google Photos. The argument there is that this will open up the service to all users, not just ones who have a Google+ account.
Is It Time To Untether Google+?
The social aspects of being able to add a review of a destination or venue on Google Maps and Google Local, add an app review on the Google Play store or place your views below a YouTube video are locked behind the requirement for a Google+ account. This has made some users upset at Google for acting a little too much like other software giants who try to get all proprietary with their software and active users.
Being able to voice thoughts by adding comments and new reviews provides a great source of free content and live data for Google. It seems a shame that they haven't taken advantage of this more by untethering the Google+ from Google proper and letting users do what they want to do.
More user time with any of their services has to be good for the search engine giant because it is an opportunity for them to get more eyeballs on their Google AdWords network which is where a large percentage of their revenue derives from anyway.
