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I know people love to complain about Google's track record of shutting things down, but for me this is the one that made me say "I'll never use anything new fro

I know people love to complain about Google's track record of shutting things down, but for me this is the one that made me say "I'll never use anything new from Google for anything important. Never. Anything." The pushed this thing SO hard for a couple of years, and now it's just gone. I feel like I'd be a fool to use anything more than search and Gmail at this point. I've heard good things about GCP but there's no way anyone will convince me that'll be around in 5 years (though if it is I might be convinced). All those chat/video apps, no way I'm even going to bother with checking them out. And so on. Google+ seemed like THE most important thing at Google, tied into everything, even required for a while, and it's gone now, or maybe rebranded into that thing they just announced earlier this week? TechCrunch has a nice Google+ timeline: https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/08/looking-back-at-google/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/08/looking-back-at-google/

ardy42 6y ago
> The pushed this thing SO hard for a couple of years, and now it's just gone. I feel like I'd be a fool to use anything more than search and Gmail at this point Did they ever restore the general + search operator that they killed to repurpose for Google+?
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Did they ever restore the general + search operator No.
  - yablak 6y ago
    Use double quotes around your search string, it gives the same behavior.
    - dredmorbius 6y ago
      Which is to say, "no".
dr-smooth 6y ago
They have this neat service called "Maps". You might want to use that.
- 29083011397778 6y ago
  Using (and improving) Open Street Maps to make life better for everyone might be a better overall net win for society as a whole though. Is Google Maps better? Yes. Without a doubt. Will OSM improve to "good enough" if enough people and corporations care enough to use it? Possibly. If we get really lucky, a cycle might just form of companies using OSM (like Niantic/Pokemon Go) because it's good enough, and a small subset of people/corporations improving OSM because it's cheaper to push OSM to good enough for their use than to use proprietary maps. Is it likely? Not really. But Free, Libre, Open-Source and Community-Owned maps for the entire world is a big enough goal that getting partway there can still be a win :)

ardy42 6y ago

> The pushed this thing SO hard for a couple of years, and now it's just gone. I feel like I'd be a fool to use anything more than search and Gmail at this point Did they ever restore the general + search operator that they killed to repurpose for Google+?

dredmorbius 6y ago
Did they ever restore the general + search operator No.
- yablak 6y ago
  Use double quotes around your search string, it gives the same behavior.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    Which is to say, "no".

dr-smooth 6y ago

They have this neat service called "Maps". You might want to use that.

29083011397778 6y ago
Using (and improving) Open Street Maps to make life better for everyone might be a better overall net win for society as a whole though. Is Google Maps better? Yes. Without a doubt. Will OSM improve to "good enough" if enough people and corporations care enough to use it? Possibly. If we get really lucky, a cycle might just form of companies using OSM (like Niantic/Pokemon Go) because it's good enough, and a small subset of people/corporations improving OSM because it's cheaper to push OSM to good enough for their use than to use proprietary maps. Is it likely? Not really. But Free, Libre, Open-Source and Community-Owned maps for the entire world is a big enough goal that getting partway there can still be a win :)