Google's Future Lies in Google+, Exec Says

Google+, the Internet giant’s social network, has had a bumpy road, but the company seems to have big plans for it.

Steve Grove, director of community partnerships for Google+ said that the social network was kind of the next version of Google.

“We’ve been consolidating the different services, so today Search, YouTube, the Google Play app store, all this plugs into Google+. And the reason for that is that Google+ is kind of like the next version of Google. And mobile is key to this; we’re seeing a lot of activity on mobile now. There’s a lot of great value here, because Search also shows results from Google+, and this is going to bring more people into Google+; people are going to see that there’s a lot of value in logging into our services before doing a search,” Grove told Mint.

Of course, this isn’t exactly surprising considering all the changes that the company has implemented recently. One example that comes to mind, mainly because of the strong reaction it pulled from people, is the new comment system over on YouTube, which now depends strongly on Google+.

On this particular topic, Grove explains, "Comments, YouTube comments, were a big problem, it was a wasteland. The fact is that the username, JellyBean407, that’s a very different mindset, and the person who’s making the comment, they would never troll with their real name.”

Of course, YouTube fans didn’t really agree with this and they were particularly upset because they had to create a Google+ account in order to leave a comment, which made everything much more personal.

Grove also admitted that when it came to social media, photographs were a big focus area for Google. “You’ve got auto-enhance, and auto-correction, and even an automatic highlight reel, so you don’t have to spend all your time curating the pictures you took. We’re using an algorithm to figure out, okay, these are the pictures you want to see, and we’re saving your time, so you can enjoy your content,” he said, revealing that there would be some big developments introduced in 2014.