Until January 24, 2017, users accessing the site using desktop computers could access some of the discontinued features by selecting the option 'Back to classic G+'. On November 18, 2015, Google+ underwent a redesign with the stated intent of making the site simpler and faster, making the new features of Communities and Collections more prominent, and removing features such as Hangouts integration, Events and Custom URLs, though Events and Custom URLs were eventually added back. YouTube comments no longer appeared on Google+ or vice versa. The transition began with YouTube, where a Google+ profile was no longer required to create, upload, or comment on a channel, but a Google+ page was instead required. The company also eliminated the Google+ social layer users no longer needed a Google+ profile to share content and communicate with contacts. Google subsequently refocused Google+ on shared interests, removing features not supporting 'an interest-based social experience'. Google Hangouts, Google's communications platform, was announced two years earlier, also at Google I/O. Google Photos, Google's photo and video library, was announced at the May 2015 Google I/O conference. By that time, two core Google+ functions, communications and photos, had become standalone services. In an interview with Steven Levy published on May 28, 2015, Horowitz said that Google+ was about to undergo a 'huge shift' that would better reflect how the service is actually used. By March 2015, Google executive Bradley Horowitz, who had co-founded Google+ with Gundotra, had replaced Besbris, becoming vice president of streams, photos, and sharing. In April 2014, Vic Gundotra, the executive in charge of Google+, departed the company with management responsibility going to David Besbris. Changes in management and product direction The company replied that the significance of Google+ was less as a Facebook competitor than as a means of gathering and connecting user information from Google's various services.

In February 2014, The New York Times likened Google+ to a ghost town, citing Google's stated 540 million 'monthly active users' and noting that almost half did not visit the site. In March 2013, average time spent on the site remained low: about 7 minutes, according to Nielsen, not including traffic from apps. Google+'s user engagement was lower than that of its competitors ComScore estimated that users averaged 3.3 minutes on the site in January 2012, and 7.5 hours on Facebook. Some 300 million monthly active users participated in the social network by interacting with the Google+ social-networking stream. In October 2013, approximately 540 million monthly active users used the social layer by interacting with Google+'s enhanced properties, such as Gmail, the +1 button, and YouTube comments. At the end of 2011, Google+ had 90 million users. According to ComScore, the biggest market was the United States followed by India. In October 2011, the service had 40 million users, according to Larry Page. In 2011, Google+ had 10 million users two weeks after the launch. According to Ars Technica, Google+ signups were 'often just an incidental byproduct of signing up for other Google services.' Consequently, the reported number of active users on Google+ grew significantly, but the average time users spent on the site was a small fraction of that on comparable social media services. Growth Īssessments of Google+ growth varied widely, because Google first defined the service as a social network, then later as 'a social layer across all of Google's services', allowing them to share a user's identity and interests. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg instituted a company-wide 'lockdown', signaling that employees were supposed to dedicate time to bringing Facebook's features into line with Google+.

Īccording to a 2016 book by a former Facebook employee, some leaders at Facebook saw Google's foray into social networking as a serious threat to the company. Features included the ability to post photos and status updates to the stream or interest-based communities, group different types of relationships (rather than simply 'friends') into Circles, a multi-person instant messaging, text and video chat called Hangouts, events, location tagging, and the ability to edit and upload photos to private cloud-based albums. Google+ was the company's fourth foray into social networking, following Google Buzz (introduced 2010, retired in 2011), Google Friend Connect (introduced 2008, retired by March 2012), and Orkut (introduced in 2004, as of 2013 operated entirely by subsidiary Google Brazil – retired in September 2014 ).

1.3 Changes in management and product direction.

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