The End of Google+ As We Know It

And I feel fine.

“It’s no secret that Google+ didn’t quite work out the way Google envisioned….  The focus of Google+ – which still isn’t quite dead – will be on ‘becoming a place where people engage around their shared interests, with the content and people who inspire them.'”

via Google Stops Requiring Google+ For Services Like YouTube And Moves Features Out.

Google+ as an aggregation of all things Google was dead on arrival, because people don’t want to use or be conscripted into all things Google.  But that doesn’t mean Google+ has nothing to offer.  The code is solid, the interface is plenty usable, and it provides a ready-made platform for communities.  For example, David Sparks and Katie Floyd have created quite a Mac Power Users community on Google+.  There’s also a community for Text Expander snippets.

Google may have envisioned Google+ as the new Facebook, but it may end up being the new Google Groups, which was the new newsgroups.  Anyone who’s been around the internet as long as I have remembers the fun, frontier-like days of the newsgroup.  Many of us learned our way around the internet via various newsgroups.

So maybe Google+ won’t be quite as all-encompassing as Google planned.  Maybe it will just be a platform for interest-based communities to gather and share ideas and information.

There’s nothing wrong with that.  In fact, I feel good about it.