Part of what's being constantly quoted around the Google+ shutdown is the stat, from Google, that 90% of G+ sessions last for fewer than five seconds. This low level of engagement is used by Google to justify yoinking the service.
But what does that statistic really mean?
First off … 90% of what? What are the actual numbers here? 10% of a huge number is still pretty big.
Second, what's the distribution? If it's "90% are under five seconds, 1% are 5-30 seconds, and 9% are 30 seconds to five hours," then that's interesting in and of itself.
Third, who comes to G+ for just five seconds? It's not that people follow an interesting link and immediately draw back in horror at the site. These sound like typos, or poorly placed/spaced icons. People are immediately leaving because they didn't intend to come here in the first place.
To me, the real question is, did someone glean that number (I presume authentic) because it intentionally looked bad, as an excuse for Google to take down it's consumer (public-facing) network? G+ can't be cheap to run, but beyond that, with GDPR now levying multi-billion dollar fines for stuff, Google may have decided it just wasn't worth the cost of maintaining that exposure without a revenue stream, regardless of whether the usage numbers were high or low.
I just wish we'd hear that story.
True, there are things they are not telling us. I wish corporations (and politicians) would give us a little credit for smarts.
I have to admit, I sometimes sign onto G+ to see if anything new has been posted. If not, I just close the app. That's usually within the 5 second range. But sometimes I discover that I've not been receiving my feed, unless I deliberately fish for it.
If Google is short on cash, then paying to fix this money pit is out of the question. But blaming the users is just ridiculous.
+Dave Hill I had very much the same reaction as you before that figure. This is the kind of abuse of figures that I'd punish if I had appropriate authority.