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Google+ is essentially the 'account page' of Google products now. You don't have to use the social stuff if you don't want to, but if you want to use anything t

Google+ is essentially the 'account page' of Google products now. You don't have to use the social stuff if you don't want to, but if you want to use anything that does connect you to other people, that's where you go. What sort of alternative are you proposing / can you give a more specific example?

dorfsmay 13y ago
> Google+ is essentially the 'account page' of Google products now It makes for terrible interface. If all I want is IM or video with somebody, I was happy with using pidgin from my desktop or an equivalent on Android. By killing xmpp federation, Google forces people still using them for IM to login in G+ and facing a wall of news, feed, forced feed (feed of what's hot), etc... If I want to check where my friend/spouse/kid is right now, I will now need to log in on G+, which will make me show up as available for IM, face a wall of updates, etc... I get it they decided to compete with facebook, but I don't like it. There is a silver lining though, people in the open source world were not addressing a lot of those needs, because Google was doing so much better and for free, hopefully we'll see more interesting OSS product coming out (or being re-freshed) to fill the gaps.