<\/a><\/div>\nStage 1: Denial — "Is this a joke? They're closing down Google+?"<\/p>\n
Stage 2: Anger — "WE HATES GOOGLES! WE HATES IT FOREVER!"<\/p>\n
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!"<\/p>\n
(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.)<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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)<\/i> 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).<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
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.<\/i> 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.<\/p>\n
A few other things:<\/p>\n
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."<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
But even though I pay<\/i> 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."<\/p>\n
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<\/i> works, as far as that goes.<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n