In memoriam
Google+
Born 28 June 2011. Died 2 April 2019.
Google+ passed on 2 April 2019, having lived eight years as Google’s answer to Facebook. Born on 28 June 2011, it offered circles, streams, and the conviction that real names would improve the social web. It was mandatory for some Google services. At its peak it claimed hundreds of millions of accounts. Ninety percent of user sessions lasted less than five seconds. No one used it. Google cited low engagement and two data breaches. The second breach moved the shutdown forward by four months. On 2 April 2019, consumer accounts began to disappear. He is survived by every engineer who learned that distribution cannot substitute for desire, and by the memory of a social network that nobody wanted to be social on.
We are sunsetting Google+ for consumer accounts.
Failed to achieve product-market fit
Mourned by Those who wanted a social network without Facebook, photographers who used its circles, and anyone who signed up because Google said they had to.
The plus sign, which survives in URLs; the data breach, which accelerated the end; and the memory of ninety percent of user sessions lasting less than five seconds.