This is rather different from Google Reader. Reader was a popular service that was going strong, the discontinuation really was a hassle to a lot of people. Google+ was essentially not used at all, so this should affect very few people.
Ironically, google reader was discontinued because they wanted people to use g+ exclusively for "sharing", and reader's ability to share/surface articles to friends was seen as unnecessary competition.
What’s the evidence that Google Reader was “a popular service that was going strong”? I don’t doubt there were a bunch of people in tech and media who were and still are vocally angry, but I don’t recall data showing that Reader was anything but a niche product.
It wasn’t expanding at Twitter/Facebook rates but it was apparently growing on a continuing basis. More importantly, however, it was popular with communities with outsize influence – journalists, writers, bloggers, academics, librarians, etc. who used it to follow and share — so when they launched a really half-assed replacement (i.e. it didn’t even work on mobile) most of the people writing reviews and answering questions were starting from a position of something which was useful to them being replaced with a mess, and Google+ never recovered from that bad reputation.
Years later, I was at a museum/gallery/archive/library tech conference and the Google Cultural Institute folks were running their sales pitch. Multiple people asked them where their institution would be “when you cancel this like Google Reader”, a sentiment I’ve heard in enough other contexts that I doubt is fully appreciated by Google management even if it has been good for getting users to think about lock-in.
Well, hardly anyone was using it. How long should a company maintain something for free that not many people are using? Where's the sadness over the death of Apple Ping, or MobileMe?
>> They did this with Google Reader 5 years ago. I don't think you can trust the longevity of Google services beyond GMail and Google Search.
> Well, hardly anyone was using it. How long should a company maintain something for free that not many people are using?
You misunderstand. He's not necessarily saying Google should maintain Google Reader or Google+ forever; he's saying that users can't trust Google to keep all but its most popular services online. If you like some new/niche Google service so much that you'll be unhappy when it's shut down, you should seriously consider not using it in the first place.
I'm not sad to see Google+ go, but the aggressive rate of metrics-driven product shutdowns by modern SaaS companies is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Users learn not get used to new services and hold of using them heavily, because they'll probably get shut down; that dampens adoption so services inevitably get shut down.
IMHO, SaaS companies need to embrace niche products, otherwise they're eventually going to kill off a lot of consumer appetite for innovation.
> Where's the sadness over the death of Apple Ping, or MobileMe?
What useful features does MobileMe have, that iCloud doesn't? I just looked up the list of features and the only thing missing seems to be publishing a personal website with iWeb.
I don't know a single person using iTunes Ping, or heh, Game Center's social features.
Or Chrome, or Android, or YouTube, or Maps, or News, or Docs, or Translate or anything else that has a large number of users. Google Reader had some big fans, but never a large number of users. They don't get rid of stuff with lots of eyeballs.
They now have five of the top ten apps used on all smartphones so would expect those to not going anywhere. So things like YouTube, maps, etc.
Plus Chrome not going anywhere as well as the Google home. But would still
expect them to iterate. So even though Android has over 80% share still would not be surprised to see them move to Fuchsia.
