Stage 1: Denial — "Is this a joke? They're closing down Google+?"
Stage 2: Anger — "WE HATES GOOGLES! WE HATES IT FOREVER!"
I see a lot of this second of the Kubler-Ross stages of grief still floating around. "I was going to buy a Pixel but SCREW YOU, GOOGLE, I'm only ever buying iPhones again!"
(Note, if you are one of the people who I've read saying that, you might want to talk to the people who own Androids who are there because they swore a mighty oath never to buy anything from Apple again.)
So I get it. I've been on G+ since the beginning. Heck, I got onto G+ because Google was shutting down Google Reader (mutter mutter). I've got thousands of posts. I have thousands of followers. I have, and would still have had, thousands of great conversations. (Lots of crappy ones, too, but …). I never saw a "ghost town," just a lot of enthusiastic fellow correspondents. For Google to round-file that — is maddening.
But I'm past it that brief surge of seeing-red fury. Maybe it was easier for me to work past it because there have been rumors of Plus' demise for years now, and so it wasn't an utterly flabbergasting surprise. Maybe it's because I did live through Reader, and learned that nothing is forever Maybe because I long ago found a WordPress plugin that let me mirror all my posts (and comments) to my self-hosted WP blog, so that I'll have a record of them long after. (The images so linked may break, but c'est la bit-rot) Maybe it's because all the photos and most of the other images I used myself are safety stored on home media (and a couple of online services).
I don't say that to sound all smug and smart. Kicking over G+ leaves a lot of holes in my past and my life that the prep work I did won't fully cover.
But some of those things are bits I learned the hard way on other services along the way. Find ways to mirror and cross-post stuff. Keep originals. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Speaking as an old guy with a history of IT that predates the Web, those are lessons that we all have to learn and relearn.
A few other things:
G+ was a free service. Indeed, Google went to great lengths not to monetize it. No ads. No promoted commercial posts. No skimming of content to send you customized adverts. That they did that gives them a certain moral leverage to say, "Guys, this is costing too much and garnering too little. We're done."
Especially since they aren't just pulling the plug next week. We have almost year to get our online affairs in order. That's remarkable.
And Google even provides tools (not perfect ones, but it will be interesting to see if they make changes in them to cover the gaps) for extracting that content. That's cold comfort, but it's a lot more than most services would give you.
And it's not just Google. A year ago, I was biting my fingernails with the failure and collapse of the Yahoo universe, because I have a large number of highly curated photos up on Flickr. That would have been horrible to lose, even if I have the digital originals. As it worked out, Verizon sold Flickr to another professional photo site company, so, at the moment, everything's safe.
But even though I pay for my Flickr stuff (because of overall size), I don't fool myself that I couldn't get an email tomorrow saying, "Sorry, we've shut down the service, effective immediately — we will refund a pro-rated portion of your annual fee."
There are no guarantees. No business, whether it's providing free stuff, freemium stuff, you're-the-product stuff, or charging you, will continue to exist unchanged for the next decade — let alone forever. That's just the way business works. That's the way life works, as far as that goes.
I'm not giving up on Google. But I do stay aware of the limitations of what it might do with any product I have. I'm certainly still a little leery of Google Photos, for just that reason — I'm currently using it as my ongoing repository because it's so damned easy, but I keep every one of those photos on my hard drive (and thus backed up to the cloud through anther path) just in case Google changes its product line or model.
I'm pissed, sure. And a bit in denial. And I've done some bargaining. And been depressed. I don't know that I'll ever get through to Acceptance.
But life moves on, whether I do or not. If I'm going to do this online thing, I have new choices to make. It would have been true sooner or later. In this case, it's sooner.
I'm going to miss the conversations, either via the stream or communities, but I'm well into acceptance due to a personality flaw; I go straight from Denial to Acceptance.
So it's off to check out the interwebs' other offerings, with nary a look back over my shoulder.
+L Gorrie Let me know where you end up (or reach out to me at my MeWe or Pluspora addy, as recorded here: https://plus.google.com/+DaveHill47/posts/azMmQ7MF1Jg
Angry? No. But every Google product, save Gmail and Drive, have been put on the "Do I really want to depend on these?" List.
That includes Project Fi which, if axed, would ruin my digital life AND cost me money.
+Nick McIntosh That's rational, and the model you should be sing it for any system / cloud / product, free or paid.
+Dave Hill I'm not happy. Google could have told those affected about the breech months ago, and given owners and mods the heads up about the shut down before issuing the press release, but instead we're getting the news 2nd and 3rd hand from a biased, ignorant press.
After all the volunteer work posting content, moderating communities, smoothing ruffled feathers, and providing other services like suicide prevention, that feels like an absolute patronising slap in the face.
So the accounts weren't used for financial fraud. Big whoopie. What about political fraud? Was my name and email addy used to write some hick mayor or the editor at a small town newspaper in support of an issue that I never would support in a million years like 'anti-Net Neutrality'. What about political donations? Was my name and email addy used to funnel money from Russia to the NRA, and thence to the Trump-GOP? Because I quit the NRA back in 2014, and I voted for McCain, but I reregistered as a Dem an hour after I heard the news that Trump had won the GOP nomination.
Excuses like G+ isn't monetised, or is a ghosttown doesn't fly with me, because we also don't have the millions of fake accounts, bots, and spammers from troll farms and PR firms spoofing activity like Fake Book, the Twit, and YuckTube. Subtract the fake accounts from those sites, and I think you'll find that G+ actually has more members than those other sites do.
So now what? And more to the point, can Google, Android, and the rest of their services be trusted at all? I never gave them my credit card number, but….
+Brass Tack if I could upvote your comment a million times, I would. Very well said!
+Brass Tack My point here is not to be a Google apologist, but it's going to seem that way.
(1) Google apparently could not tell who was affected by the "breach" because this wasn't obtaining a downloadable file or something, but a discovered hole in the APIs that, when any app was given permission to see publicly available profile info, it was then able to see (if it looked for it) other profile information.
(2) Google did err on the side of concealment in not announcing that API problem when they found it. They should be held to account for that.
(3) The idea that Google should have let "owners and mods" a heads up before making the announcement … honestly, I don't think it would have made any difference. I agree it would have been polite to have reached out at the same time.
(4) It's important to remember that G+ isn't being shut down directly by this particular security incident — it's indirect.
Per Google's explanation, in looking at the impact of the problem, they "discovered" that G+ consumer engagement was really, really low, so not worth the money to continue to support. I find this difficult to believe, given that (a) discussions of G+ engagement and looming shutdowns have been circulating for years, and (b) the idea that Google hadn't noticed the engagement issue before strains credulity.
My strong suspicion at this point is that it's fear of massive fines from GDPR, similar to what FB is already facing. That's what led them to pull the plug. If so, I wish they'd admit it, but perhaps they were concerned that "It will cost too much money to keep G+ / AboutMe profile info secure, given the risks" was a less controversial sell.
(5) Google can be trusted with secure information as much as anyone else can be. Which, given actual data breakins reported on a regular basis, means very little. The presumption should be that your credit card info is in the wild somewhere, so you should always check your statements. It should also be that your name, email addy, and phone number are likely in the wild, along with your birthdate and SSN. That 's not Google's doing, certainly not solely, but it's my assumption.