Google is taking another step back from its aggressive promotion of Google+, the ambitious social network it launched four years ago. In a blog post, Google said it is eliminating the need to have a Google+ account to create a YouTube channel or to share content.
Now people can use a general Google account to access everything.
Google’s Bradley Horowitz, vice president of Streams, Photos and Sharing wrote on its official blog, “When we launched Google+, we set out to help people discover, share and connect across Google like they do in real life. While we got certain things right, we made a few choices that, in hindsight, we’ve needed to rethink. So over the next few months, we’re going to be making some important changes.”
For instance, people have said it’s a lot easier just to use a general Google account for everything and that they don’t think it makes sense for their Google+ profile to identify them on all the Google products they use.
So, the blog states, “In the coming months, a Google Account will be all you’ll need to share content, communicate with contacts, create a YouTube channel and more, all across Google. YouTube will be one of the first products to make this change.”
The company said people will have options for managing and removing Google+ public profiles if they don’t plan to use the service.
The changes “Won’t happen overnight,” Google said and will happen over several months.
This is the latest blow to the service Google launched with great fanfare and promoted aggressively. In May Google spun off Google+Photos from the service, its most used feature.
The company does not appear to be giving up on Google+ entirely, although it admits it will be changing. It introduced a new feature called Collections, similar to Pinterest’s online bulletin boards.
While it failed to attract Facebook or Twitter like devotion and use, it is a very active service and some users like it better than its rivals. Unfortunately for Google, not enough users seem to feel that way.
