Google Plus turning negative

Jack Schofield charts the background to Google’s failure to promote its Google+ service into the social networking Premier League. Then he looks at how things might go in the future.

He writes:

G+ started out as a slow, bloated website, it attempted to gain users by compulsion — locking G+ to YouTube comments, Gmail and other Google properties — and it tried to enforce the use of real names…


All of these were unpopular with many users…

The clincher is in his conclusion:

G+ might have done better if it hadn’t been delusional about replacing Facebook, and aimed at providing something that users — rather than Google — actually needed.

There are useful things in Google+. Google Hangouts are OK even though I’ve struggled to get them working as well as FaceTime or Skype. However, there’s no logical reason why Hangouts should be part of Google+ and not a stand-alone app or, possibly, integrated into Gmail.

Google Plus is turning negative, but dont bet on it going away | ZDNet.