Google – Silver lining

G+ failure saves Google from major problem.

• Google is finally shutting down its attempt at competing with Facebook in Social Networking following a security lapse which, due to the inactivity on the service, has had very little impact.
• Google+ or G+ was Google’s fourth attempt at social networking which was launched in June 2011 and in which large amounts of money was invested.
• Despite being seen as a major threat by Facebook and a large number of users, G+ was never able to gain significant traction.
• Most of G+ users were simply there as a consequence of signing up for other Google services which became clear in the usage figures from both ComScore and Nielsen.
• For example, in 2012 ComScore estimated that engagement was just 3.3 minutes per month compared to 7.5 hours for Facebook.
• This did not improve and in 2015, the site was adjusted to focus more on media sharing prompting RFM to reclassify G+ from Social Networking to Media Consumption.
• That redesign has also had little effect and following the discovery of a potential security breach in March 2018, the decision was taken to close the service down.
• Given the attention that has been placed on Facebook for its breaches, it would appear surprising that Google has got a free pass for this one.
• However, when one looks a bit deeper, the reason becomes clear.
• In March, Google discovered that one of the G+ APIs was making some users’ private data visible to any developer who wrote an application to that API.
• This had the potential to affect about 500,000 users but because G+ has been a ghost town pretty much since it was launched, only 432 people even applied for access to that API.
• Furthermore, it also appears that no one bothered to access the API in a way to access private data, and so very little, if any, damage has been done.
• My position on Google has been that it is not going to suffer the kind of backlash that Facebook is facing.
• This is because its product development cycle is much longer, and it tests its products far more thoroughly before bringing them to market.
• Even with the best testing, the odd bug is going to slip through here and there and I think this incident is one of these.
• However, if G+ had been a resounding success, this bug would most likely have been a major problem.
• Then again, if it had been widely used, Google may have noticed the vulnerability long before March 2018.
• Either way, there is a silver lining to G+ ignominious failure which Google will now reap as this breach will most likely be quickly forgotten.
• I don’t see this as a weakness of Google’s development process and so I think that it is still in good shape to avoid most of the negative attention that is being focused on data and security.
• Hence, I still think Google is likely to escape the most unscathed from the current privacy-related backlash and hence should outperform its peers.
• That being said, privacy advocate Apple is likely to fare the best of all while the current storm rages.