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Short version: Google couldn't keep Reader going because it would take money to get it working on the new Google+ infrastructure that failed spectacularly. Fun

Short version: Google couldn't keep Reader going because it would take money to get it working on the new Google+ infrastructure that failed spectacularly. Fun fact: Google+ also royally broke the Google contacts feature in Gmail and it still hasn't quite recovered, meaning you can't really trust it when you sync it to other things. I wound up with 2 or 3 duplicates of contacts, some linked to Google+ profiles and some not, that sometimes had invisible connections to each other. They wouldn't merge correctly. Sometimes when you deleted one of them, more than one would disappear and you'd lose everything that was in that contact. They appear to be trying to remedy with this with the new Contacts web app that's in beta.

ddispaltro 11y ago
This is my single biggest problem with the whole g+ thing. Very frustrating, never mess with contacts.
- philovivero 11y ago
  Oh. Eye-opener. Is this why in the past year or two random contacts are doubled, tripled, quadrupled, and I can't merge them, and sometimes one app (like Hangouts/messaging) won't know a phone number is attached to a contact while another (the phone app) will, etc? The contacts in Android seem totally fubar lately. Knowing it's due to the G+ POS clears things up a bit.
  - ddispaltro 11y ago
    Randomly, I also notice sometimes I have to edit a contact's phone number then save again for it to register as a number that hangouts recognizes. Edit: I have Google Fi
brorfred 11y ago
It's worse than that- Google+ broke the basic syntax in google search. Adding + before a word used to make it mandatory. They change it to quotations marks so they could have +username instead of @username for google plus. That still bothers me and Google search doesn't work as well.
- hobs 11y ago
  That is my single biggest complaint about G+, that they would have compromised search for the biggest boondoggle google has ever created. I would definitely say that implementing that was 100% when I saw that google was done making good decisions and on the path towards making their core product worse.
  - JBReefer 11y ago
    Every company has their time in the wilderness - MS just emerged from theirs, Apple had theirs, and Google started theirs a while back. They're usually caused by hubris, and learning humility, to not antagonize your customers, and that you can make mistakes - like Microsoft seems to have - usually fixes things.
    - hobs 11y ago
      Really good point, unfortunately I think one of the biggest reasons any big company does get out of "the woods" is through competition starting to scare them. Its fairly obvious that google is not really afraid of any large competitor in their space. More than anything they are just buying up the next google (like msft did) to ensure that nobody can come up from the depths.
      - cxseven 11y ago
        Except that it was likely investors pushing Google to come up with a response to Facebook that caused them to create Google Plus, even though in the process they had to kill several more vibrant social networks that had organically grown around their existing products. Desperate imitation of Apple caused additional problems.
- Kwpolska 11y ago
  > They changed it to quotation marks […] They just got rid of one of the two available operators; quotes were there 10+ years ago.
- hangonhn 11y ago
zamalek 11y ago
> broke the Google contacts feature in Gmail This is the top reason that I use Gmail for "signing up to websites that I don't trust with my privacy." I use it for nothing else. When I set it up to sync my contacts, I'd get contacts on my phone from spam/notifications that found their way into my inbox. Hundreds of "noreply@" contacts. Maybe that wasn't exactly the case (long time ago, can't remember), but I did end up with many useless contacts that obscured the 60 or so contacts that I care about. "So just turn it off," okay, but now I still need to go and clean up hundreds of contacts. The whole platform tries to be so functional that it ends up being useless. Office365 is entirely unspectacular, apart from some unacceptable login flaws (Live vs. personal O365 vs. work O365 account is a mess) it's satisfyingly adequate. Less is more. What it has become is such a pity, I opened my Gmail account when it was still invite-only and it was such a pragmatic client. I'd switch back to that Gmail in a heartbeat.

ddispaltro 11y ago

This is my single biggest problem with the whole g+ thing. Very frustrating, never mess with contacts.

philovivero 11y ago
Oh. Eye-opener. Is this why in the past year or two random contacts are doubled, tripled, quadrupled, and I can't merge them, and sometimes one app (like Hangouts/messaging) won't know a phone number is attached to a contact while another (the phone app) will, etc? The contacts in Android seem totally fubar lately. Knowing it's due to the G+ POS clears things up a bit.
- ddispaltro 11y ago
  Randomly, I also notice sometimes I have to edit a contact's phone number then save again for it to register as a number that hangouts recognizes. Edit: I have Google Fi

brorfred 11y ago

It's worse than that- Google+ broke the basic syntax in google search. Adding + before a word used to make it mandatory. They change it to quotations marks so they could have +username instead of @username for google plus. That still bothers me and Google search doesn't work as well.

hobs 11y ago
That is my single biggest complaint about G+, that they would have compromised search for the biggest boondoggle google has ever created. I would definitely say that implementing that was 100% when I saw that google was done making good decisions and on the path towards making their core product worse.
- JBReefer 11y ago
  Every company has their time in the wilderness - MS just emerged from theirs, Apple had theirs, and Google started theirs a while back. They're usually caused by hubris, and learning humility, to not antagonize your customers, and that you can make mistakes - like Microsoft seems to have - usually fixes things.
  - hobs 11y ago
    Really good point, unfortunately I think one of the biggest reasons any big company does get out of "the woods" is through competition starting to scare them. Its fairly obvious that google is not really afraid of any large competitor in their space. More than anything they are just buying up the next google (like msft did) to ensure that nobody can come up from the depths.
    - cxseven 11y ago
      Except that it was likely investors pushing Google to come up with a response to Facebook that caused them to create Google Plus, even though in the process they had to kill several more vibrant social networks that had organically grown around their existing products. Desperate imitation of Apple caused additional problems.
Kwpolska 11y ago
> They changed it to quotation marks […] They just got rid of one of the two available operators; quotes were there 10+ years ago.
hangonhn 11y ago

zamalek 11y ago

> broke the Google contacts feature in Gmail This is the top reason that I use Gmail for "signing up to websites that I don't trust with my privacy." I use it for nothing else. When I set it up to sync my contacts, I'd get contacts on my phone from spam/notifications that found their way into my inbox. Hundreds of "noreply@" contacts. Maybe that wasn't exactly the case (long time ago, can't remember), but I did end up with many useless contacts that obscured the 60 or so contacts that I care about. "So just turn it off," okay, but now I still need to go and clean up hundreds of contacts. The whole platform tries to be so functional that it ends up being useless. Office365 is entirely unspectacular, apart from some unacceptable login flaws (Live vs. personal O365 vs. work O365 account is a mess) it's satisfyingly adequate. Less is more. What it has become is such a pity, I opened my Gmail account when it was still invite-only and it was such a pragmatic client. I'd switch back to that Gmail in a heartbeat.