In other news, the G Suite Page has become quite active on Google+, posting regular announcements of all sorts of...
In other news, the G Suite Page has become quite active on Google+, posting regular announcements of all sorts of updates. It seems odd that they would be ramping up this was if there wasn’t going to be a way for G Suite users to continue to get these updates post-April. This gives me added hope that there will be cross-enterprise Google+ sharing for G Suite users.
For me this also implies that it's possible to 'convert' consumer profile into business profile, though I don't think Google would let us do that despite the possibility.
ReplyDeleteHalfey Halphstein I don’t see that implication at all, nor do I think it is likely to happen.
ReplyDeleteBrian Holt Hawthorne I see it like this: G Suite keeps updating its page as if G+ is not going anywhere. It's probably because they can still continue updating even after consumer G+ is gone, which could mean they might be able to transfer/convert it to the enterprise G+.
ReplyDeleteWhen is the gsuite page moving to fb so you can still get your product updates?😀
ReplyDeleteHalfey Halphstein I assume that all the official Google pages are on the Google G Suite account, so there would be no reason for Google to have to transfer/convert the G Suite page to enterprise G+. It is already there.
ReplyDeleteI have seen nothing even hinting at adding the ability to transfer g+ content from a consumer Google account to a G Suite account. You can transfer e-mail, and there are third party services using the Drive API to transfer drive files, but those are all easy compared to G+ content. The fact they they are getting rid of the G+ API means there won’t even be an easy way for a 3rd party service to try to do it.
Brian Holt Hawthorne We both could be right or wrong.
ReplyDeleteI thought they made it clear paying customers would continue to get G+ I don't know whether that extends to grandfathered free suite accounts. I have one but I would never in a billion years use it to post to G+
ReplyDeleteI've never seen anyone posting from G Suite account to the consumer G+ (if that was even possible), or even if someone did, I did not see any indication that it was done from a G Suite account (I'm not even sure if the official G Suite Google+ profile is created in consumer G+ or the G Suite account).
ReplyDeleteI followed quite a number of business profiles/pages here and they all seem to be using the consumer G+, not the G Suite account.
Cindy Brown afaik that applies to the intra-net version of G+. i.e only making G+ posts that are available to your own domain.
ReplyDeleteHmmm... could be a possibility for a private community then, if someone's willing to host within that and open accounts for those members.
ReplyDeleteEven so, I wouldn't trust Google not to screw that up.
Cindy Brown you'd have to set up a non-profit and deal with the surrounding paperwork if you don't want to pay for all the members, or have your members pay you an annual/monthly so you can pay for their user accounts within your domain.
ReplyDeleteUnless you already have one of the free ones from back when they were available, but yes.
ReplyDeleteit Legacy Free G Suite only allows up to 10 users; if you want more than that, you need to upgrade to a paid subscription.
ReplyDeletehttps://support.google.com/a/answer/2855120?hl=en
Brian Holt Hawthorne And for my entry into this angels-dancing-on-a-pinhead debate: I suspect that there are at least three distinct Google+ instances or domains, and quite probably a few more.
ReplyDeleteThere's Consumer G+, which we've been using these past
seven and some years.
There's G Suite G+, which is an enterprise product, scoped by DNS domains.
(What happens for companies with multiple domains, or, say, doing M&A processes, and combining or transitioning domains has likely been the subject of several project planning meetings....)
There's Google Corporate G+, which is internal to Google itself, though it may also simply be a G Suite instance. I suspect it has at least some ability to act across both Consumer and G Suite.
And there may be an Admin G+ of some sort which rides over all of those, though there's little evidence of it -- Googlers who've acted as community reps or devs have typically done so under their public Consumer G+ accounts, which often also contain personal and social content (something I've always found demeaning to them). For development there are also very likely various dev, qa, stage instances, though these I suspect use a subset or more likely _independent set of activity data.
The G Suite account might belong to any one of these. Its purpose is to communicate about G Suite to the public, and G+ is one such channel for it to do that. Dog-fooding and credible signalling are both arguments for the account to post on the existing Consumer G+ site, even if that content itself won't be migrated to some new system. So the argument that the existence and activity of this account alone argues for portability of accounts is thin.
On the other hand, it's a place we might pose some questions and requests ;-)
Halfey Halphstein The profile I'm using now to post this is a GSuite account.
ReplyDeleteThere is no way for you to tell whether a profile is using a GSuite account or a consumer account unless you are in the same domain (in which case you see the factory icon in About).
Julie Wills Do you know what the scope/reach of your G Suite account will be post-sunset? Limited to your own domain, I presume?
ReplyDeleteJulie Wills good for you. Everything you've posted with that account should remain after consumer G+ sunset.
ReplyDeleteHalfey Halphstein It'll remain, but where will it be visible from?
ReplyDeleteEdward Morbius No, I don't know
ReplyDeleteEdward Morbius if it was me I won't immediately freak out if my posts suddenly no longer visible to those outside of my network. My issue right now is how to preserve my content before the scheduled doomsday. People who have been using G Suite all this while should not feel that much pressure as I am.
ReplyDeleteEdward Morbius I agree that portability of accounts is extremely unlikely. I’d go so far to say that I’d be shocked if that happened; I wasn’t making that argument. I was just saying that if the G Suite account is now communicating more actively with G Suite subscribers over G+, it seems odd that they would build up a new communication program if they weren’t expecting to still use it after April.
ReplyDeleteYou raised a good point, though. Just because Google enables cross-enterprise sharing for their own domain, doesn’t mean they will allow other G Suite domains to do so as well. On that, I just have my hopes that they will realize that it is a compelling feature for corporations to use for cross-enterprise partnerships and collaboration.
Julie Wills Absent any reassuring details from Google (which we haven’t seen yet), I have no confidence that G+ is going to be include in the features supported by legacy-free G Suite domains post-April. There are enough other core G Suite products that we don’t get (e.g, Sites), that it wouldn’t surprise me if Google pulled the G+ rug out from under us, under the argument that legacy-free are “consumers”.
ReplyDeleteIf we don’t get some reassurance by d-day, assuming they ever even announce when that might be, beyond “April”, I am considering upgrading to G Suite basic for my domain.
I also wouldn't assume that posts made from G Suite accounts on the current consumer G+, to survive shutdown day.
ReplyDeleteFilip H.F. Slagter Now that is an interesting thought. I’ve been assuming that my publicly accessible posts are stored in my G Suite domains, since they are also accessible to other domain users and are associated with my G Suite accounts. But if those are actually stored on a consumer G+ instance and only linked to from my G Suite accounts, they could well go away.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, we have no details on this. And my experience with G Suite support is that they are just as uninformed about such implementation details. So much for the “forthcoming details” Google promised us in October.
Brian Holt Hawthorne yeah, it's a shame we have to work with assumptions...
ReplyDeleteI guess it also doesn't help that domain-restricted posts are also hosted on the plus.google.com domain along with the 'consumer' posts, rather than the G Suite owner's own (sub-)domain, making it more difficult to make that distinction.
I'm btw unable to plus-mention 'consumer' users, i.e. users not on my G Suite domain, in a domain-restricted post, which is another indication that it's unlikely that consumers will be able to comment on domain-restricted posts, also after shutdown.
Anyway, since we can't be sure, I would strongly suggest also backing up your 'consumer' posts you made from your G Suite account(s), to err on the side of caution.
ReplyDeleteFilip H.F. Slagter Oh, I never assumed that consumer users would be able to comment on anything. I have been assuming that they will just take G+ away from their accounts. My question has been whether posts that are currently no domain-restricted will be viewable by either consumer google accounts or by people not logged into a google account at all. I’ve been assuming they will, but if non-domain-restricted posts are on another realm somewhere, they could just disappear.
ReplyDeleteBrian Holt Hawthorne wasn't saying you were, but it's something I've seen some people say; once even based on a GSuite support chat.
ReplyDeleteI asked the G Suite folks about cross-enterprise sharing after the April date on one of their posts. The response so far was about what is expected.
ReplyDeleteHey Brian, thank you for taking the time to contact us in relation to this. Right now the publicly shared details don't cover these questions. I have made a request to see if we can help answer these questions, I will share any updates as soon as they become available. If not, keep an eye on our blog for further announcements blog.google - The Keyword -LH
Reading between the lines, however, it sounds as though the G Suite team may know the answer to the question, but it just hasn’t been publicly announce yet. Keeping fingers crossed; hoping for the best, but expecting the worst.
Brian Holt Hawthorne At least you got a response.
ReplyDeleteEdward Morbius I really didn’t expect whoever is running the G Suite page to reply even that much. They seem to be successfully keeping the spam out of their comments as well. Evidence that at least one group inside Google is actively still using G+.
ReplyDelete