A social network that every Google account was given whether it wanted one or not. Closed with the explanation that 90 per cent of sessions lasted under five seconds.
Half the disagreement in this thread is between people defining Google+ by what it meant in 2011 and people defining it by what it meant at its peak. Both are right. Neither is the current meaning.
I have written a lot of these and this one is straightforward: 8 yrs, peaked 2012, cause “Shut down by Google”. There is no mystery. There is only the small sadness of a thing that was exactly right for a while.
My first encounter with Google+ was a friend sending me a link with no explanation at all, which was the etiquette then. You did not say what it was. You said 'look' and let it happen to the person.
For the record — a bank's fraud-warning poster, seen 17 January. Google+, used correctly, in full, with no visible irony. Nobody involved is under fifty.
For anyone arriving from the 2010s: Google+ is one of those terms that meant something narrow first and something broad later, and the two definitions were used at each other for years before anyone noticed.
What does it mean? Write it the way you would say it out loud.
