Official Updates from Google about G+
There haven't been any more as of 8-Jan-2019.
It's 3 months today since the initial announcement from Google on 8-Oct-2018.
It's just under one month since the expediting announcement from Google on 10-Dec-2018 that chopped 4 months off the sunset date.
It's 2 months until the G+ API closes on 7-Mar-2019.
It's 3 months (ish) until Google Plus closes in April 2019. We still don't know the exact date.
We still don't know the actual mechanics of what happens on the date G+ closes. Will it go read only for a while? Will all G+ URLs return 404? Will Takeout remain available for a while?
As far as I can tell there's been no announcement about what's going to happen to G+ integration into Blogger. That's profiles, comments, widgets, share buttons and so on. There's nothing on the official Blogger blog and nothing in the Blogger product forums.
There's been no announcements about bugs, fixes or changes to Takeout. Although Google has been silently updating and breaking it.
There's been no announcement about how long Takeout will be available to download G+ content.
There's been no attempt to contact G+ users direct.
There's no indication within G+ that G+ is closing down. You would expect some kind of header warning message but there's nothing.
There's nothing in the G+ Help pages to indicate that G+ is closing down.
https://support.google.com/plus#topic=6320382
People are still arriving in the G+Help community saying "Is it true G+ is closing down"?
There's been no clarification and answers to all the many questions people have about the G+ Sunset and it's ramifications. Even trusted support people are having to say "we think that, maybe, we hope, etc". And this is about major issues such as whether publicly visible Profiles will survive or what happens to photos attached to G+ posts.
So that's 2 blog posts. 2 posts about the API. And that's the sum total of Google's official communications about closing a platform used by millions.
Is Google just ignoring us, hoping we'll go away?
There haven't been any more as of 8-Jan-2019.
It's 3 months today since the initial announcement from Google on 8-Oct-2018.
It's just under one month since the expediting announcement from Google on 10-Dec-2018 that chopped 4 months off the sunset date.
It's 2 months until the G+ API closes on 7-Mar-2019.
It's 3 months (ish) until Google Plus closes in April 2019. We still don't know the exact date.
We still don't know the actual mechanics of what happens on the date G+ closes. Will it go read only for a while? Will all G+ URLs return 404? Will Takeout remain available for a while?
As far as I can tell there's been no announcement about what's going to happen to G+ integration into Blogger. That's profiles, comments, widgets, share buttons and so on. There's nothing on the official Blogger blog and nothing in the Blogger product forums.
There's been no announcements about bugs, fixes or changes to Takeout. Although Google has been silently updating and breaking it.
There's been no announcement about how long Takeout will be available to download G+ content.
There's been no attempt to contact G+ users direct.
There's no indication within G+ that G+ is closing down. You would expect some kind of header warning message but there's nothing.
There's nothing in the G+ Help pages to indicate that G+ is closing down.
https://support.google.com/plus#topic=6320382
People are still arriving in the G+Help community saying "Is it true G+ is closing down"?
There's been no clarification and answers to all the many questions people have about the G+ Sunset and it's ramifications. Even trusted support people are having to say "we think that, maybe, we hope, etc". And this is about major issues such as whether publicly visible Profiles will survive or what happens to photos attached to G+ posts.
So that's 2 blog posts. 2 posts about the API. And that's the sum total of Google's official communications about closing a platform used by millions.
Is Google just ignoring us, hoping we'll go away?
Users: ?
ReplyDeleteGoogle: 🖕
This is the case when I completely agree with you about the bad attitude of a huge corporation to its users!
ReplyDeleteGot anything to add before I go more public?
ReplyDeleteWhere you can go more public? :D
ReplyDeleteNobody will listen, nobody will answer, for google this is already "done and closed" project, for users - most do not care anyway and most who care are here.
Some even claimed that have developed backchannel and could get more info, for example: plus.google.com - Request for Clarifications from Google on the Google+ Shutdown I have develo...
Guess what - zero info from google, but this is expected, if internally this is dead project.
I, like many users, wish, that G+ would remain, or at least google would pay some attention to users, communicate about stuff, improve tools and explain why something is done.
But on other side - i'm working on large enough company (still much smaller than google) and i know how reality looks like - closing services which do not bring $$$ on table. Usually this is just line in budget estimation, minimal expenses for cutting ties to other services, minimal fees for impact control and zero communication as "nobody cares anyway" is already set up in management heads.
So unless you have proper statistics and numbers that there are really many users who care AND you have contacts inside google management (to bring those numbers on management meeting - "hey, look, we do not look good for millions of users") - nothing will change. C'est la vie...
Take a look for example at the Google Plus app description in Google's Play store. "Meet interesting people..."
ReplyDeleteGoogle doesn't give a single care about any of this. Not about us users, not about any of the things that you've posted about. They don't care about, or even understand, feelings/emotions or even basic humanity.
ReplyDeleteTo them, they're being generous in waiting until April before making everything G+ related go 404 from their servers.
They're cold, soulless automatons with the single focus of market share and profit in a few areas. And social humanity isn't one of those areas.
Maybe address them on the platforms where they are active such as Facebook and Twitter?
ReplyDelete"Is Google just ignoring us, hoping we'll go away?"
ReplyDeleteWell, we will, in a few months at the outside...
Julian Bond If I wrote this, I'd say all the same things, but with a lot more swearing.
ReplyDeleteYou've seen the bit I'd dropped in Gideon's Community, yes?
Here:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/104092656004159577193/posts/SBpLG9x7xc6
(That's a private community -- it's mostly what Julian said, but ... more cussy.)
Also, this, which I'd posted (publicly) two days after the initial G+ sunset announcement.
ReplyDeleteplus.google.com - Dear Googles: Let's talk Google Take Out (Submitted as Feedback, slightly e...
Response?
Crickets.
Andrius Narbutas Julian, John (G+MM owner) and I are part of that group Gideon was talking about, along with a few others.
ReplyDeleteWe'd gathered information and forwarded it. We've heard, and worse, seen, nothing in return.
As for user stats -- there's the evidence of this community (3700+ members), Pluspora (7,000+ members), the "Save Google+" petitions (30,000+ signatures), and activity in the official Google+ Help forum (it's largely inundated, as Julian noted, with people asking if the shutdown is even happening).
Google have said all but nothing -- the initial announcement, and two slight and exceedingly unclear updates.
Google staff appear completely muzzled, though why is unclear. I've seen speculation and made some of my own. My assessment is that whatever's going on in the Googleplex is not good, though I really don't know if it's internal trouble, external, or bits of both.
I've previously measured G+ activity by several metrics. I've been engaged in trying to get a sense of G+ Communities activity, and suspect we're looking at about 4,000 - 8,000 communities of from ~10 to 6.8 million members which are reasonably active and vital.
And the fact is that Google said that the sunset would occur over 10 months, that Google Data Takeout / data liberation front was a tool for liberating date:
Our goal is to "liberate" data so that consumers and businesses using Google products always have a choice when it comes to the technology they use.
https://publicpolicy.googleblog.com/2009/09/introducing-dataliberationorg-liberate.html
So much for that idea.
The @dataliberation Twitter account has been actively tweeting away ... well, actually, not so much -- last post April 2013.
From those of us who went thru the Google Reader shutdown, scream all you want, come D day, Google Plus will be shuttered and there will be nothing we can do about that... or is there? Yes, it’s called blockchain... the internet was designed to route around a nuclear attack, censorship is that nuclear attack.
ReplyDeleteDarin R. McClure The point isn't crying to have the service retained. It's requesting Google stand up to their previous commitments about information and support.
ReplyDeleteEdward Morbius good luck with that.
ReplyDeleteDarin R. McClure Why thank you.
ReplyDeleteEdward Morbius some more info about the lack of activity on the DLF Twitter (and Blogger) accounts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16918331
ReplyDelete(I think I've shared that one privately with you some months ago, in case it looks familiar.)
news.ycombinator.com - It turns out reports of the Data Liberation Front demise have been greatly exagg... | Hacker News
"And that's the sum total of Google's official communications about closing a platform used by millions."
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, there's actually just 387 people still using Google+. ;-)
Great. ;) Thanks for the news about the non-news. Great comments here. I share many of the questions and observations of "Do evil" G+'s roll-in.
ReplyDeleteHere's one question I've not seen addressed, related to the unknown of what will happen to existing displays/collections/albums etc. (Read only? Archives with urls, like Picasa?)
I wonder - what will happen to the millions of currently Google-indexed public links, to posts, communities, collections, albums, etc. ?!
I'm seeing many website logins broken this week. On BestBuy.com, for example, the Google login button just has a red line circle over it and I was unable to reset pswd by email. I was able to reset my account pswd by email on dhgate.com and it still had all my account info, thankfully.
ReplyDeleteI expect to see a lot more in the coming weeks.
Where is David Thacker, VP, Product Management, G Suite? He seems to have almost no social media presence at all. This is the guy who's name is on the announcements of the G+ Sunset.
ReplyDeleteThere's no information on the Google Plus product page.
ReplyDeletehttps://plus.google.com/about
Or on the G+ App page.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.plus
Julian Bond And Ben Smith. Also a never-seen on G+.
ReplyDeletehttps://blog.google/technology/safety-security/project-strobe/
Looks like Ben Smith may have left the building.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.linkedin.com/in/smithbenjamin/
Julian Bond Screencap? I'm hitting an authentication wall, and don't have an account.
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Pwty-D1mC_mfEb6RYTKN4TzqfyZicz9Qc_5AFheYRXCoyPbkixuiP97_Tlb0sbQhQyDSSngJC4ziafmAntslnPetLk7Uy5Z6_E8=s0
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/H1iFGiJtFZOauQ9wMtlHBlKIQdiOVaH2eDECaFeMKQNGlnpvXulH4e3CGy-CvMXzrH_ox1MAFJkHa85h9gqCVcp7D5F9pXzM3po=s0
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/GJAoDqmTwUZlvSRW_DrODQjzGlm-J7ldvTS7hSk4tvOxA8pfTlDfd0Kwh1zfUi75IVLl43VZnaPkANQVPgLP2KeD1jAnCeRBYY8=s0
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/CcicQ-UcVm_0Qt_19lBYMJtvHd6gVxt897j8ZoOhIqFjxRtk-uGvGq3GetN08jkXMyRXxqYvDzWgkPo7OKFPhW3m5qGfstAVUL8=s0
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/f7k1CIBvbQuCQYM6iYGHoXfKVO6fUjvjq1CfHaDt1cPvDbevyLHhGrNYd5Q9vOe1raoIS4InX4IlUtGYtFXFNfeWHZoBUMBD528=s0
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/aLpedL_g3bX9psJ5GtKwEWoIB6Y8R2QwDZKEZxCjn9z_LyyNnEcqfKbfUYDMIWddnsT6o6poaWEoKkIC742JDMXBun90oNEUJfA=s0
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/5rjc7OHVfBZaPQfXOGwc0ITMpBqdXmmDj-1AZG72p2aTNhWJQu15iDG5dBF2PQh4r9U-073KdztVF-afueNZEogFzJ_WegwfXAM=s0
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/qpXXDKwJRBQmm-KQfIJEpovFDZWCi-CX4Dl1FySABZYRU89u4lJrtQXSQ7T3YJRAJpMPf0m9IDI-Y5QNKW_BfFA_PP4xHdj-yag=s0
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-kQWZoAt_yGAGyI6iewgiIac6IlDRDrsXbM5zGpnJ-r4PSl8xDS6aKzQ14pWFSNanu2_2ZkP8n4qMvCn_zPttL65-oMJNvSuI0M=s0
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/qYbjloicAMgmIMME5-y2CasTQuASW5vmsVjhClrWj9rVtgwzZh5jMWVxsu99tZidmWePWq6Tk-85fLbVQ10G0O0SjbGecOmbiTs=s0
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/w5Jis7mvjDuOrdZSwVRKCRskObmEuG7speUxOxmjMn9QzrFMWhz0Y_47ZviU-nQRbeKW6tY_3jMtLGxcMwaNC_h3BWsxvpxSXbg=s0
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/2Kat2V4fC9CRX4iQa0vRLde44NuY1okMyVyfatbmGp3RdkLUqI52yBgk9vCXlzcMJna_s9en5RASVqIj4IC0OwoKf-GkkYZdTtg=s0
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/sC77rNasH59oua-yWGLN3YoyDHyuzdaQxkH42Hs5UxeC58kJgEu0gk_ziQ3jio4nB03jO5epj9GGVCIocQsDfmGFb3U8Gfh9jGg=s0
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/30ThnQOI1JGclHixbuqLvZXvfcC2mJSNUtk1qnvMQTAYQ0e0uxKAuRWKZP6O2dP7S2bcry627L_4244wwoCQAlQkfh-MNx4NYJY=s0
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/WYZUhzljYvEVwJqARsXH2Cmg0ayeq0gBIQMdDUXrGmr2ymT0M_qAUFD-L4U1YCfDNbjjQ4n27iPfsyAx89VwakAx4_s6C_CuEzg=s0
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/fgNrdEWUkcO3NPgLL2f-948NLsbiWcl09cvS_58050SPEbloS7vbIJhbrk1pCSka_VLuj8hs3E5Iq3fnaBhrqzrxC8cKnX4q7UY=s0
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/HB6g6wK4wkP7EQ0ai2NbD3j30neZ4IGRVCbEU4QFFSRd4hRByMWn5EhHA_KvC0KzucBJs7m_fNQln9qWD7P-zAOS3_ez-2FXgjE=s0
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/4E4JvhvWYh2PmbEEPFCSSz0wognr1b-GWXOn94WlEYapWy_qqd8TS58G5ugtFWNPgpLHtANQyYclAzfGnE0Td1cefIYkY0kjXN0=s0
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/k2mzGasASD8dyU3PNUDiQgzIkj4YIpPbpTs_fHyU6nooQNbR8QT5QOCxf35EnHmEKFdJjIO-bmFpRmmVS8qgv4nnvp8Y6mHSA38=s0
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/IWXctY2ubNnn_GjiEknetmIGW-D1jyMImtPeOShzJFeAxjwLXLQyoFmdpx_6mQs41iR6Vc7kzMsq_Dcpn6PpDYfDwdBTyEbiI5o=s0
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/DSmEApvbkNDtP_z7Sw58nhT0tOAlh_Iy1OlOdCXtM4hMosb9bAznYIkbn07GtFzk1CmH96lw230-P4QUoaDfOAlPyuK4KjTEQ_A=s0
ReplyDeleteJulian Bond Yep. Found him at Twilio also here:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.startcon.com/speakers#
+Julian: Ok to share this at #PlexodusReddit?
ReplyDeleteEdward Morbius Please do. All my stuff is copyleft ;)
ReplyDeleteJulian Bond Done:
ReplyDeletehttps://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/comments/ae5q0i/official_updates_from_google_about_g/
Julian Bond Different Ben Smith apparently, via Reddit comment:
ReplyDeletehttps://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/comments/ae4xf4/benjamin_smith_google_vp_who_penned_the_sunset/ednf4js/
I wonder where the real G+ announcing, Ben Smith is, as he seems to have no social media presence at all.
ReplyDeleteMaybe they made him up, so he wouldn't get lynched. 🤣
ReplyDelete