Google+
Google+ was an online social networking platform developed by Google Inc., designed to integrate and enhance user experiences across various Google services, such as Gmail and YouTube. Launched to the public in September 2011, Google+ allowed users to create profiles that included personal information and photos, which could be organized into "Circles" for tailored content sharing. Each Circle represented a group of contacts—such as friends, family, or acquaintances—determining the visibility of posts and interactions within the network. A notable feature of Google+ was Hangouts, enabling real-time group chats and video calls with up to ten participants.
Despite its initial rapid growth, with over 300 million active users by October 2013, the platform faced challenges regarding user engagement and privacy concerns. By early 2014, studies indicated a significant decline in active users, leading Google to announce the sunsetting of the consumer version of Google+ in 2018, due in part to low usage rates and a data leak incident. The official shutdown of consumer accounts took place on April 2, 2019, although Google’s other services remained unaffected. Overall, Google+ aimed to redefine social networking but ultimately struggled to maintain a sustainable user base.
Subject Terms
Google+
Google+ was an online social networking platform run by the technology and internet service company Google Inc. It was an optional service, so those who use Google for their email service were not required to make a Google+ profile, however, many times, the profile was made automatically.
These profiles, visible to the public, included the user’s photographs and basic information and also connected to Google’s other services, such as Gmail and YouTube. Users could be added to Google+ Circles where they were organized into different groups, such as friends, family, and acquaintances. The Circle a person was in dictated what content they could see on the homepage’s feed. For example, friends and family could see more personal content, while acquaintances were limited to work-related content.
Another main feature of Google+ was Hangouts, which were enhanced group chats where users could share photos and documents in real time on a wide range of devices, from computers to tablets. Additionally, up to ten people with Google+ profiles could participate in live video chats during these sessions.
In October 2018, Google announced that they would be sunsetting the consumer version of Google+ in 2019; a further announcement, in January 2019, stated that consumer accounts on Google+ would be shut down by April 2, 2019. In 2023, all remaining business accounts were closed and migrated to Google Chats.
Brief History
The concept behind Google+ was to build a social networking service based upon compartmentalizing contacts into Circles. Google had previously tried its hand at social networking with Google Buzz, which caused controversy due to settings that many argued violated federal laws meant to protect privacy. Google+ changed the approach to privacy and the overall social networking model.
On June 28, 2011, a test version of Google+ was launched with a limited number of early adopters and journalists invited to join the service. The following day, the testers were allowed to send out limited invitations to join. This was a similar invitation-only approach to how the company unveiled its email service, Gmail.
The number of invitations users could give out increased to 150 in August 2011. The following month, on September 20, 2011, the invitations were discontinued and Google+ became open to everyone eighteen years old and older. Within that first month, the service had 25 million unique users, according to the analytics group comScore. There was some initial controversy over the use of pseudonyms rather than a user’s real name. Some users complained that they had been locked out of their profiles for using pseudonyms. At a summit on October 19, 2011, Google executive Vic Gundotra announced that the service would begin supporting identification other than legal names.
On November 7, 2011, Google launched Google+ Pages, which allowed businesses to set up a company profile and share their information. Google+ was opened to people thirteen years old and older on January 26, 2012. That same month, Google introduced "Search, plus Your World," which connected the company’s highly popular search engine Google Search with users’ Google+ profiles. This added feature allowed users to harvest more personal results from the search engine based on their Google+ profile and the people contained in their Circles.
Many other features were added in 2012, including Google+ Events, which allowed users to create a page for an event, invite people to attend, and share images from the event afterward. Toward the end of the year, Google+ Communities was added, which allowed users to engage in conversations with other users about specific similar interests.
In 2014, Google added even more features, such as Google+ Local for discovering businesses and Google+ Views, which displayed the number of times the user’s content has been viewed by others. That same year, speculation also mounted regarding the future of Google+ when Gundotra, one of the founding supporters of the service, announced that he would be leaving Google.
Overview
Google+ was a social networking interface that is part of Google’s interconnected group of internet services. By October 2013, the company claimed to host over 300 million active users. With a Google+ profile, users had a more enhanced experience with the number of online platforms owned by Google, such as the video-sharing service YouTube and Google News. The popular Google search engine could also be enhanced through Google+. A mobile version of Google+ became available for smartphones in 2011.
Google+ accounts revolved around users’ profiles. Through a profile, users controlled what other people saw when their name was searched on the Google search engine by choosing what information to make public or private. The service was based around Circles which allowed a user to categorize others they were connected to on Google+. The three Circles that came predefined were friends, family, and acquaintances. From there, users could create their own Circles.
The main page of Google+ was known as the stream. This hub was where status updates from whomever the user was following were displayed. Through their circles, users selected who could see their status updates. For example, updates could be set so that coworkers could only see work-related posts. Users could also upload their photographs to Google+ and store them on Google’s cloud storage network, which allows users to access information via a server. When images are stored on the cloud, they do not take up space on a user’s computer or count against the one-gigabyte limit Google+ has for images.
Google+ offered a few options for communicating with other users. Private messages could be sent by creating a status update and setting it so that only one specific user could view it. Another way to communicate through Google+ was in a hangout. These chat sessions consisted of text or used webcams and microphones built into computers and smartphones for a live video chat. Up to ten users could be in a video hangout simultaneously, with windows for each user.
Business Pages
With a Google+ business page, companies could market themselves and expand their online presence. On their Google+ page, businesses could share updates and communicate with their customers. Once they created a page, businesses had the option of adding a "badge" to their main website to drive traffic to their Google+ profile. Businesses could also pay to have their ads pop up on Google and the websites it owns, such as YouTube. Large companies that used Google+ included the Ford Motor Company and the news network Al Jazeera America.
Popularity
The popularity of Google+ grew steadily after its public launch in September 2011. Initially, it grew much faster than expected. In October 2013, there were over three hundred million active users on Google+. Research showed that by 2012, most users logging in to Google+ were men. In February 2014, a product marketing manager for the service claimed that Google+ had 540 million active monthly users. By the following year, however, a study published by Stone Temple Consulting showed that the site had only about 111 million active users, and about 90 percent of Google+ profiles did not contain any public posts. The popularity of the site continued to diminish over the next few years. In October 2018, Google announced that they would be shutting down the consumer version of Google+ due to low usage. In December 2018, Google+ experienced a data leak, which expedited the decision to shut down the site. In January 2019, it was announced that consumer accounts on Google+ would officially be shut down by April 2, 2019. Other Google products, including Gmail and Google's cloud service, would not be affected by Google+'s shutdown. Some business accounts remained on the platform until 2023, when Google transitioned all remaining users to Google Chat.
Bibliography
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