As someone who thought Google+ doomed facebook, because of Gmail accounts and everyone with Google as their homepage already, I learned not to overestimate Google’s abilities.
FB is what it is because of advertising revenue. Google already had a giant advertising business where jettisoning Google+ made no difference to their bottom line.
1. Google had recently exploited their home page to push chrome browser successfully altering the browser market. They pushed anyone visiting Google to chrome with a popup on the home page. The same opportunity was there for G+, but with updates from friends.
2. Everyone already had a Google account and many millennials were using Google Talk at the time. It appeared Google could undermine the network effects.
3. The UI of G+ appeared better
4. Facebook had released the newsfeed otherwise known as ‘stalker mode’ at the time and people recoiled at the idea of broadcasting their every action to every acquaintance. The circles idea was a way of providing both privacy and the ability to broadcast widely when needed.
5. Google had tons of money and devoted their world class highly paid genius employees to building a social network.
You can see parallels to each of these in AI now. Their pre existing index of all the world’s information, their existing search engine that you can easily pop an LLM in, the huge lead in cash, etc. They are in a great position but don’t underestimate their ability to waste it.
So is Gemini tbh. It's the only agent I've used that gets itself stuck in ridiculous loops repeating "ok. I'm done. I'm ready to commit the changes. There are no bugs. I'm done."
Google somehow manages to fumble the easiest layups. I think Anthropic et al have a real chance here.
I thought it was a far superior UI to facebook when it launched. I tried to use it but the gravity of the network effect was too strong on facebook's side.
In the end I'd rather if both had failed. Although one can argue that they actually did. But that's another story.
Everything was obviously DOA after it dies. I also thought it wouldn't last but it wouldn't be the first or last tech company initiative that lived on long after people thought it would die. Weird things happen. "Obviously" isn't a good filter.
AbstractH24|16 days ago
rchaud|15 days ago
Debeli|12 days ago
pragmatic|17 days ago
It was obviously DOA and waaaayyy outside G'scompetence.
twobitshifter|17 days ago
2. Everyone already had a Google account and many millennials were using Google Talk at the time. It appeared Google could undermine the network effects.
3. The UI of G+ appeared better
4. Facebook had released the newsfeed otherwise known as ‘stalker mode’ at the time and people recoiled at the idea of broadcasting their every action to every acquaintance. The circles idea was a way of providing both privacy and the ability to broadcast widely when needed.
5. Google had tons of money and devoted their world class highly paid genius employees to building a social network.
You can see parallels to each of these in AI now. Their pre existing index of all the world’s information, their existing search engine that you can easily pop an LLM in, the huge lead in cash, etc. They are in a great position but don’t underestimate their ability to waste it.
akersten|17 days ago
Google somehow manages to fumble the easiest layups. I think Anthropic et al have a real chance here.
abraxas|17 days ago
In the end I'd rather if both had failed. Although one can argue that they actually did. But that's another story.
MattGrommes|17 days ago
mhitza|17 days ago
It became clear they where desperate about user numbers when thay forced the merge of Youtube accounts. Or something like that.