14 DAY TRIAL // You can pout for as long as you want, but Google+ is not going anywhere. Dave Besbris, the new chief of the social network, claims that the rumors of the demise of Google+ have been greatly exaggerated.
“We’re actually very happy with the progress of Google+. Larry Page said this at the time that Vic transitioned – that he’s going to continue wrking on building this stuff, that he’s very happy with it. The company is behind it. I have no idea where these rumors come from, to be honest with you,” Besbris told Re/Code.
Since Google+ isn’t exactly loved across the world, many expected that the service would get shut down or pushed aside by the company as soon as news about Vic Gundotra’s departure from the top spot back in April.
Besbris also took on the task of clearing up one big misconception about the network he’s now leading. He states that people underestimate the connection Google+ has with its users around interests, and that people believe Google is trying to compete with some product or another, which gives them certain expectations.
“That’s not actually how we compete with products. We don’t go into industries because somebody else is doing something important. We go in because we want to make users happy, because we see some software out there that’s scratching some itches,” Besbris states.
He goes on to point out that this is how Google has always done things. It’s not like there weren’t any other search engines before Google, it’s just that the company came forward and did things differently. The same goes about Gmail and many other tools and services.
Google+, a priority
It’s not just that Google+ isn’t on its way out the door, but it actually comes pretty high on the company’s priority list. Photos, Hangouts, Google+ are among Besbris’ top priorities among the social products.
He boasts that video hangouts are pretty incredible and one of the best features of Google+. “There’s no technology out there as refined for doing the multi-party video as what we have. In the consumer space, some of what we’ve seen that’s really incredible has been communities. That’s what we’ve seen take off like a rocket inside Google+,” he adds.
On the other hand, Besbris refused to talk about how many users Google+ has, something that will certainly annoy many people since Google has notoriously refused to discuss this matter. It is estimated that there are some 300 million users that view and comment on Google+ content each month.