Google nonplussed

Google+ lost out because it could not engage consumers

Google has decided to shut down its social media network platform Google Plus (or +). By August 2019, the platform will be closed to individuals though it will continue to be open to enterprises. The proximate cause is a security gap that exposed user data. Although it was discovered (and patched) as long ago as March 2018, the breach led to Google being asked awkward questions by the United States Senate. Curiously though, Facebook, Google Plus’ dominant rival, has survived a series of far more serious data leaks and continues to prosper. Some management theorists suggest that the security gap is just a convenient trigger for Google to shut down a failed initiative. After all, not once since its launch in 2011 has Google+ looked like seriously challenging Facebook. While “Plus” has over 900 million users, that’s because anyone with a gmail address has a Google+ page by default.

The truth is, Google+ had little “adhesive” power; the average period of user engagement is just five seconds — so short, that it can be dismissed as accidental. But this too is puzzling when one considers Google’s brand equity as well as the fact that other Google platforms such as YouTube attract huge, sticky audiences. Indeed, between YouTube, Blogger, the marque search website, and the news dissemination services, one would have assumed that Google+ would have been a guaranteed success especially since Google did put huge resources into its creation and marketing. This is more so because back in 2011, Facebook was an upstart struggling to finance its platform even as it was adding members at a great speed. It had no other properties to speak of. Google, in contrast, was already a behemoth. It was dominant in the online search and advertising business it had invented; it ran the world's biggest video-sharing website, a popular blogging service, and the world's largest free email service as well.

Why couldn't Google leverage these strengths to grab the attention on its social media platform? The answers must lie in the realms of behavioural science rather than technology or finance. One possible explanation is that people don't care to use two generic social media networks. And since Facebook was better when it started and good enough later, consumers did not bother going through the trouble of replicating their sharing experience on Google+. What helped Facebook edge past Google+ in consumer experience was possibly Google's ill-focused approach. The search giant was interested in granular data about users. It wanted to link Google+ activity to “search” patterns. But, in its laser focus on analytics, it failed to create an environment where people wanted to spend hours playing with apps and chatting with friends. Ironically, Facebook ended up knowing more about its users precisely because it focused on generating user engagement. Management theorists will surely debate these and other possibilities for years to come. In the meantime, an old aphorism about the tech industry and its fast-cycles is worth pondering over: Every new cycle throws up new challengers and no industry leader has ever managed to retain pole position through two successive cycles.