Oh G+, Where Art Thou?

Google Plus (G+) is gone. You noticed this, right?

I sort of did. I had a G+ account for TimeStorm Communications mainly because I figured it could only help to post my public work on Google's own platform, even if no one read it there. By piggybacking on G+, I hoped to at least get some of these pieces noticed in Search.

G+ never really took off. It came out too late to effectively compete with Facebook and dare I say, LinkedIn. So when a massive data breach was discovered last year--a full three years after G+ leaks had begun--Google saw only a black hole for its little-used platform and announced G+ would be shut down effective April 2, 2019.

G+ is now on the Enterprise (and like CBS All Access, it's not free).

At least Google sent emails reminding its users that the shutdown was imminent. But like all things on the web, G+ isn't really gone: it still lives as part of the G Suite, also known as Google Enterprise. And like the newest Enterprise on CBS' paid service, it isn't free.

Will Sparks Fly on G Suite?

(With apologies to Bruce Springsteen)

G Suite is Google's cloud-based enterprise solution that includes many of the tools you probably use for free: Gmail, Docs, Photos Spreadsheets, Calendar, and cloud storage. Starting at $6/month, you can get more such as video and voice conferencing, team messaging, and 30 GB of cloud storage compared to 15GB for the freebie version.

And you get G+. Enterprise was pretty much the only place where it did reasonably well. Since G+ has only been gone for a month, it's too soon to see if it will grow there. Who knows: maybe it will flourish in the walled cloud environment. But it isn't highlighted on the pricing plans. The higher-end plans, which are a very reasonable $12 and $25/month, offer unlimited cloud storage and additional services such as a smart search tool that goes across your G Suite files, low-code app development, and stronger security and data loss prevention. (Google said it patched the G+ breach as soon as it discovered it in 2018.)

G+ Was a Weaker But Nicer Player

I admit I kind of liked G+. It was easy to browse and didn't have Facebook's magnet for drama. And as far as I could tell, there wasn't any fake news; at least nothing outrageous showed up on my feed which stubbornly only featured people and companies I actively chose to follow!

True story: A Facebook ad on my page asked if I wanted to "date over 50 men." That's an awful lot of guys to track. I envisioned creating an Excel file for this purpose. Anyway, I was already in a relationship (still going strong) so I ignored it. A few months later, another Facebook ad appeared asking if I was interested in meeting women. This time, they didn't offer a number.

As a latecomer to social media, G+ never came close to its competitors. Google's own Project Strobe blog admitted that 90% of its "consumer" (free) version lasted less than five seconds. That might be why I don't recall seeing any blatant advertising on it: you had to have at least 1,000 followers and I doubt many companies put in the effort to reach that number or took advantage of advertising there instead of on the search engine itself.

Where Did All The G+ Data Go?

Gone baby, gone. If you paid attention to your emails, you had the opportunity to download all your data before it went away.

Anything you saved to your Google Drive or photos, though, is safe. Google says it only retained information it was required to keep:

"Certain Google+ content may not be deleted from consumer Google+ and/or Album Archive if it is needed in order to meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process, legal obligation (including legal preservation obligations), or governmental request."

Well, I can say that the Mueller Report included some public Twitter data but so far I've yet to see G+ mentioned!