It will be celebrated little by little, perhaps no one will give sad news about it for some time, but at the moment there are no tears at the bedside. After all, Google+ has never been too popular: it was for a few, perhaps for a short time, certainly never to the point of aiming even remotely to reach one's goal. And the goal was high-sounding: to enter the elite of social networks, where Facebook reigns and Twitter chases. Where G + has never been, except with the brute force of numbers inherited from the Google galaxy.
Google + is a project born in the shadow of the giant, and on the shoulders of the giant it has never climbed. The fact that the account was shared with Gmail and other properties of the group meant that for some time Google could argue that the number of users was high, and increasing. But it was a kind of alchemy, and the stones never really turned to gold.
Not that there was no life, mind you. However, 90% of visits lasted only a few seconds (certainly not a social network standard), while the remaining 10% were attracted to the magazines that some networks have produced and animated over the years. Few stuff, small niches, no ability to scale to a new dimension. And above all, no updates: Google+ has remained the same and over the years (numbers in hand) there have been more logo changes than the features included in the service.
Not even Google has ever believed too much in G + and (façade statements aside), it has never done too much to support its growth and role. Strategic choices, perhaps a way to divide the tasks with Facebook, avoiding each other to set foot in the market of others: compared to distance, avoiding direct competition. Any posthumous reading is in any case useless, formal words that are recited in similar cases.
What makes you think most is Google's choice in the face of what has happened in these hours: no reaction to try to keep G + alive, no effort to dribble the obstacle and relaunch the social network. Google, indeed, turns it off. It will remain alive for enterprise users (certainly not many, certainly not for long), after which it can start to become a simple dry branch. The container of identity that Google wanted to build will have to have a less tangible dimension and more oriented to the management of data between the different services: in short, anything but a social network, and with the new sword of Damocles of privacy regulations.
The Google+ funeral begins today. It is unlikely that second thoughts will come, even if Google would have all the strength and capital to be able to try the adventure again. Too bad, one could say: Facebook could have had an alter-ego, just as Google Search deserves an alternative. On the other hand, in the global market, everything boils down to an oligopoly in which a dominant player leaves little room for those who pursue and practically nothing for those who come in the third bracket. For Google this was perhaps the right opportunity to scrape what never worked, forget what it failed to build, erase what it failed to dominate.
RIP.
The Google+ funeral has begun: RIP
