14 DAY TRIAL // The anticipated dismantling of Google+ has been greatly exaggerated, and Bradley Horowitz, Google's vice president of Photos, Streams, and Sharing, has strong words against all the fabricated blogosphere rumors circling the social network, like vultures around the carcass of a long dead animal.
While true that Google+ has taken a big blow with the Photos service being broken off from the network's main offering, Mr. Horowitz, in an interview with Steven Levy on Backchannel has made it quite clear the service is not going anywhere, but merely transforming.
“[O]ne particular use-case on Google Plus is people aligning around common interests,” said Mr. Horowitz, referring to the service's Collections feature, launched only two weeks before. This update will allow users to share content on Google+ around topics of interests, instead of blindly funneling them to everyone in their circles.
Breaking off Photos is a radical change from Google+'s original concept where people are supposed to be brought together and allowed to interact with each other much easier, but according to Mr. Horowitz, this is just part of the grand master plan.
Apparently, Photos going off on its own is not the only change in store for the social networking giant, and other updates are coming, either in Day 2 of Google I/O 2015, or more later on this year.
We'll just have to wait and see, but whilst Photos looked like a feature that could have easily stood on its own, the same thing can't be said of some other Google+ features. On the other hand, nobody said that those “changes” Mr. Horowitz was referring to are supposed to be subtractions. Maybe he was referring to an addition of tools, like for example, Google Now integration.
“No, Google+ is not dead. In fact, it’s got more signs of life than it’s had in some time”
We just wanted to end the article with this quote. Seems pretty clear Google's management doesn't intend to give up on Google+ just yet, and there are no immediate plans to bury it next to Buzz, Wave, or Reader. Or at least not still wearing its best clothes.