Why Google Plus failed to compete with Facebook? And why Google has not admitted to it’s failure

Despite its great name and long history in the leadership of the technical world, Google has not admitted that one of their biggest projects have failed, Google Plus, one of the largest projects that put them a lot of hopes that have not achieved a quarter despite the launch for almost seven years.

According to a market research company, the average network usage is 3 minutes per month (not daily) compared to the average number of Facebook users 405 minutes per month, Google also claims that the monthly traffic is 100 million, and if these visits are calculated in practice All of these are primarily for visitors to other Google sites like YouTube, Google Docs, etc.

All these numbers, and many others, have not convinced Google so far in admitting that they have been defeated in this area, and that attempts to catch up with the leaderboards are no longer possible if we are not impossible, and will not find the recovery and painkiller attempts that Google is trying to inject into the body of the network.

This is a deeper reading and analysis of the reasons behind the failure of one of the biggest projects, on which Google had so much hope to set foot in the world of social networking, which has a huge and enormous number of users, and the fictitious profits behind it.

There is no social goal from Google Plus

If we follow the company’s record in the field of social networking, we find that it often comes late or comes in front, but with a false vision and short at the same time, its attempts with social networks from Orkut to Reader to Friend Connect, then to Wave and Buzz are all disappointing attempts.

The company did not learn from all these attempts until it joined the new network Google Plus. Initially, Google defined the service as a social network, but when the idea did not work and users did not accept it, the company referred to it as a “social class across all Google services,” and that was the problem in defining the platform for users.

The digital identity of any platform is of interest to users and advertisers, it does not make sense to launch the platform as a social network, and when less stumbled or not accepted the identity of the platform is completely changed, confusing everyone in determining what this platform.

A network of inactive users

When the Facebook platform appeared, not everyone accepted this new type of social networking, and Facebook was one of the most hated social networks of all social networks, and perhaps this is why Google believes that there is an opportunity to gain a larger market share.

However, Facebook has completely transformed things and is now one of the most popular social networks around it because of its activity compatible with the smartphones launched at the time and advertising efforts, and when it launched Google Plus was the subject of fear and concern of Mark Zuckerberg in the threat of his network launched strongly in that Time.

But now, seeing the power of Facebook and other social networks, the failure of Google Plus has become a subject of cynicism and cynicism among netizens, it is being described that if you want to spend time alone on the Internet and without the hassle, just go to Google Plus.

A quick look at the numbers at Google Plus, we find that things are great, and maybe competing with Facebook. According to one estimate, Google Plus has 2.2 billion profiles. An analysis of these numbers is a problem. Most of these profiles are not active. In 2015, only 9% of these files posted public content on the network, a third of those publishers commented on the content on the YouTube platform.

The bottom line is that those 2.2 billion profiles, only 0.3 percent, or 6.6 million users, shared a public post on Google Plus in 2015, and to remind the reader that this remarkable activity was offset by a huge expansion and polarization of the Facebook platform for subscribers and users. Internet.

Given the size of Google, the effort to develop its social network, and the degree to which Google Plus saw it as an essential tool to compete with Facebook, these are shocking and very frightening numbers that predict that competition never existed.

Design alone is not enough

Perhaps the failure of Google Plus will be more surprising if we look at the design in which it was launched, despite its overlap with Facebook, but the feature of circles that allowed users to organize contacts was a powerful idea, rather than the privacy settings of Facebook and friends lists, should be Circles are natural and easy.

But users did not, they did not want to try to categorize their friends, they just wanted to spread the idea and let anyone who has access to the network to interact with it. The circles were not enough to pull members from a place that already contained their friends to a new location that no one was using.

The Facebook platform has the distinctive feature that everyone has already been in its corridors, and each user has several friends and groups already interacting with it, so it is difficult for him to leave this already built community to try to build another community of friends while not ensuring that all those Friends you meet, coming in the way through Facebook suggestions.

Google Plus didn’t offer anything new and wasn’t easy to use

If we look at digital social space today, we will find Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat , YouTube and the list goes on, in other words, the number of social networks is too many, and in order to emerge a social networking platform in this growing market must be new and modern, and provide what others did not offer Google Plus did not come up with the new or supernatural idea that made everyone migrate to it, because it was just another social network without anything new.

In addition, Google Plus was not easy to use, and unfortunately, a large part of users still do not know anything about Google Plus, as the company hoped, and as is known to any site or company, the user experience (UX) is of utmost importance, once If something is difficult to use, the visitor will get out of the digital building immediately and no return.

Support Google Plus from the outside and not from the inside

From the moment the platform was launched, Google’s employees were terrified and fearful of what would turn out to be, with Google’s chief executive apparently wanting the network to succeed in every way.

Google CEO Larry Page issued a company-wide memo telling employees that the amount of reward they would receive would depend on the success of the social network. The CEO wanted Google to defend Google Plus and its benefits to their families and friends, otherwise, they would not be rewarded.

The launchers removed the existing video conferencing system for Google Plus, forcing staff to use the chat feature instead, all attempts to force the company to use the network. So, the lesson here is that Google should know better than any threat-based innovation will eventually be wiped out and not even accepted by everyone, even if they show otherwise.

Bad experience and criticization

From the moment it was launched on the Internet, blogs and tech news sites had nothing nice to say about Google Plus, the network was simply greeted with some kind of saturation and uncertainty based on the company’s failing social networking experiences.

It has been critically criticized, making everyone turn away from it as the rise of the Facebook platform coincides very quickly. So from the start, any article or analysis of a Google Plus story is about its imminent demise.

Neglect or ignore the smartphone revolution

While other social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have turned to the new wave that began to emerge, namely the wave of smartphones and the issuance of versions compatible with new mobile users, Google Plus was still working to modify its service on the Web, and despite the launch of the network version Compatible with smartphones, but this step was too late to match the race that started.

The importance of listening to the views of users

The straw that broke the back of Google Plus, according to many analysts, is the failed administration that was leading the project by not giving any consideration to the opinions of users and netizens. But with Google Plus the company failed completely, because the company thought it knew better than users, and listened to itself only in exchange for the many voices that were calling for reforms and features of the network to become better.

Google Plus will be on the Internet for a long time, because if it is stopped, it will be considered an explicit recognition of the company defeat, and record another failure in the book of its many failed projects. Therefore, the company does not want to waive any loss of any major product at all.

Although Google Plus will now focus on its core user base while introducing new applications and integrating successful products, the dream of reaching the level of other social networks will still be impossible if not impossible.

Perhaps Google should focus on what it is doing better now for its core projects such as search engines, self-driving vehicles, and Google news because focusing on projects that have excelled in it will be easier than trying to catch up with those who preceded them in other fields.