Dear Google,
As someone who despised Facebook with the light and fire of volcanic magma, I was looking forward to an alternative. So when Google+ hit the tubes, I was ready. Eager though I was to join up, like many, it took about a month before I “got an invite” to this “special club”. By then, I -and the rest of the universe- didn’t give a shit anymore. Sure I signed on. But none of my friends had. I guess I could have sent them an email inviting them. But… why? They weren’t worrying about getting an “invite”. They were on Facebook, actually socializing.
Next time you try to start the next Facebook, try to understand the concept of “critical mass,” because now, that ship has sailed. You wasted your time and your money and like so many hopeful idiots in used cars ads you’re never getting back what you paid for it. So stop trying to shove your product down our throats.
Sincerely,
Someone Who Once Held Great Hope For Your Endeavors
But… if you don’t have a Google+ ID to start with, this isn’t a problem. So this is actively pushing Gmailers away from Google+. And that’s a good thing… isn’t it?
I think now you are automatically connected to it. You can’t opt out as it was at the beginning.
I guess someone in management figured since it worked for Gmail it would work for G+, not realizing that Gmail worked because SMTP provided the existing critical mass.
Personally I stayed off G+ because of their real names policy thing. If Facebook decides my name is bogus and kicks me off, oh well - I guess I don’t use facebook.
If Google decides my name is bogus and kicks me off, there go a bunch of documents, the email address where my bills go, etc. - I just can’t afford the risk. (their claim is they will only kick you off G+, but they seem to have a history of kicking you off every Google thing, allegedly down to waking up to find your Android phone wiped)
No, you can still opt out (though Google will harrass you about it fairly frequently, and if you don’t pay attention, you can accidentally create a G+ profile). What you CANNOT do is opt out of G+ if you want to leave Youtube comments, which I found out recently.
Well, and when GMail came out, it was competing against pretty inferior competitors. Hotmail and Yahoo didn’t have very good spam filters, back in the day.
You probably shouldn’t give yourself away as a person who posts Youtube comments.
Believe it or not, there are actually some people out there that aren’t 14 year old sociopaths who want to interact with Youtube content creators. The Geek & Sundry channel seems to be relatively lunatic-free, in my experience. 
“Google continues to try and cram its users into Google Plus, its also-ran social network.” It’s embarrassing. I think Google have made nothing but a string of ill-conceived decisions in recent years.
When G+ came out, it was competing against an inferior competitor, I think - facebook was and is a mess.
Circles - a great idea
Hangouts - a great idea
Integrating messaging cleanly with email - a great idea
Integrating your Gmail calendar with social media type event planning - what were they thinking that they didn’t do that?
Incidentally, you also can’t review an app in the Android store, or review a business on Maps, without G+
I just looked at their real names policy. If you have a single name (like, say, most Indonesians), you have to complete their freaking appeals process. So much stupid I can’t even fathom it.
also ran? hah. I prefer G+ to Facebook and facebook is just becoming useable by taking the best features from G+.
I don’t want to use G+ but I have no real option not to have a stub G+ account. Gah! The utility function U(Gmail) + U(G+) > 0 for the moment, but I’m keeping it under review.
I…um…
I think I’m one of the few people who actually likes G+, but I was trying to get friends and acquaintances that I cared about to switch before they made G+ a requirement. I get the annoyance, but honestly…they require a g+ account for nearly everything now. I get people’s annoyance, I really do; I imagine it’s as annoying as, say, people trying to install DirectX and finding that, boom, they now have a Bing Bar in their browser. On the other hand, it was kinda shitty that just about anyone could do a drive-by one-star on apps just because they didn’t like that they had to pay a whole $1.99 for an ad-free app
Thanks for the heads-up on email. I mean, darn near anyone can email me as it is already, but…um…I’m sure this matters in some way.
Same here. Isn’t it amazing how the tide of opinion turned on G+? People forgot all about how awful FB really is, and all of a sudden, G+ is the bad guy. Hell, BB thought it was great until a few months ago when G+ started requiring connections the way FB has been trying to do for years, and now it’s an “also-ran”. Whatever. FB is still shit.
It was competing against an inferior competitor, in terms of tech features, sure. But not inferior in terms of usability. The vast majority of people who use Facebook have no problem with how it works (or, not enough of a problem to think about switching). The amount of spam I was getting in my Hotmail/Yahoo mail accounts around the time that GMail came out? That was pretty significant. Compare to when Facebook was competing against MySpace. MySpace was absolutely horrendous, from a usability standpoint, and Facebook (when it started) beat the crap out of it. And then once it built up a large enough userbase, they started messing with it.
On top of that, switching your email platform doesn’t require that everybody you know (or, at least a large percentage) do the same, in order to be usable. GMail had a big advantage in that respect as well. I think 3 people I know are on G+, and only one of them is actively using it. So I don’t spend any time there. From what I hear, there’s a fairly large userbase of photographers that are finding G+ very nice. But that doesn’t encompass anybody in my circles (G+ or otherwise).
This is not a new feature, it’s been there since 2011. All that’s new is that they made it visible in Gmail, instead of just Google+, and made Gmail autocomplete include G+ results.
If Google+ is an also-ran social network, I guess they all are except Facebook, as it’s #2 in usage…
How could this possibly be a feature? I’ve not used G+ . I signed up for a gmail account a couple of weeks ago and I think it also created me a G+ account in the process? But assuming that it’s a lot like facebook, I can’t imagine why I would want that to integrate with my email. If I’m connected with someone or something on a social network, why would I also need that going to my inbox? Could I not just communicate with them just fine on the social network? Why would I want it in an email instead of a social network message/post? I get it if it’s something like a gigantic file or a strange file format that’s not easily postable or something like that we’re trying to pass back and forth, but I would think that if we’re doing something like that, couldn’t I just use the social network connection to message them my email address, specifically the right email address that I want it to go to? I use 3 different emails, and my gmail isn’t the best option for all of my connections.
Google really seems to be going downhill. G+ is a failure that they absolutely refuse to let go of, trying to force increasingly pissed-off customers into. Their privacy issues are beginning to surpass those of Facebook. Every Android app they update is increasingly broken or degraded, taking away options and functionality from what used to be fantastic everyday tools. Their policy has shifted from “don’t be evil” to “if you want something to be private, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” And by all accounts, their customer service department doesn’t exist. When did this bright, helpful, idealistic genius of a company transform into a stubborn, senile old man, drunkenly smashing its own products and abusing its customers in a Charles Foster Kane-style tantrum?
Exactly - that’s what I meant earlier w.r.t. SMTP providing the critical mass - everyone was already using SMTP email, so they could get away with trickling out Gmail. If G+ was a sort of alternate interface to facebook, they could do the same and reasonably expect it to work, but it ain’t and it didn’t.
Well, you might like having half a dozen inboxes spread across the Internet that you have to catch up with, but some of us prefer to get all our private messages in a single inbox. The fact that Facebook gives me a Facebook-only inbox and Facebook-only IM system is a negative to me.
