Google Plus Closure is Disastrous

Closing Google Plus is not the right solution. Here is why.

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By. Jacob

Edited: 2019-03-01 09:48

The failure of Google+ comes as no surprise. The name alone is incredibly unrelatable and unoriginal. How did Alphabet expect to compete with other social media services, having named their own service like this?

Back when Google+ was redesigned I was very critical of the changes.

I have always viewed G+ as inferior to Facebook, but if anyone is in a good position to compete with Facebook, it would be Google. It seems very little was done to even try, however. Closing Google+ was not the right solution.

They are letting down a, small, but faithful user base by closing.

In my opinion, their design was incredibly clumsy, so if they had done a proper redesign, most likely they would also have had more users.

The worst thing is, all content will be deleted, widgets will stop working, and the Google+ API closed. If a site owner relied on such functionality, they should now spend time looking for alternatives, removing existing things from their sites.

Some people have also spend a lot of time building communities on Google Plus, all of this will also go away – without compensation!

Commenting modules stop working

I am not sure how many opted to use the commenting modules, and other widgets from Google+. But, after the closure of Google Plus, these will now stop working. This is a huge problem, because some site owners have relied on these features.

Like with Facebook and Disqus comments, Google Plus offered their own commenting widget for website owners. I never used these on Beamtic, because I wanted to retain control over my content, and not depend on third parties for commenting. It would also be a potential GDPR nightmare, further complicating the consent requirements. The EU is quite crazy with these things.

Anyway, with Google Plus closing down for good, all comments will be deleted and commenting widgets stop working. This is incredibly bad for website owners who relied on these things.

This was mentioned in an e-mail I got from Google+:

If you sign in to sites and apps using the Google+ Sign-in button, these buttons will stop working in the coming weeks but in some cases may be replaced by a Google Sign-in button. You'll still be able to sign in with your Google Account wherever you see Google Sign-in buttons. Learn more

If you've used Google+ for comments on your own or other sites, this feature will be removed from Blogger by February 4th and other sites by March 7th. All your Google+ comments on all sites will be deleted starting April 2, 2019. Learn more

It shows how dangerous it is to rely on third-party commenting modules. Take my advice: Keep your comments on your own site!

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