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Highlights
Technology and design problems were
not real causes for shooting Google+ down. Google+ was a dead
service walking because having started too late they pursued a
'me-too' strategy instead of creating
radically innovative and much
higher user value. The Google+ developers have not been
communicated a
compelling
grand vision and had no knowledge of the 'big picture' they
were to create. |
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Google+ was not the
first one, it was a follower that started too late.
Google Plus (Google+ of
just G+)
social network was launched in June 2011.
Google created Google + to defeat Facebook. In March 2019, Google+
was shut down for business and personal use because is was a dead
service walking. The company cited low user engagement and
difficulties in creating and maintaining a successful Google+ that
meets consumer expectations.
Google was expected to
morph
it because even after the company spent hundreds of millions of
dollars on it, Google+ was a failure. It had no
takers.
And we know why: Google+
had very weak
competitive differentiation strategy.
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"The Ground is the basis of all
competition. Competitors are
distinguished by the position
they hold on the ground. Your
choice of ground is a key aspect
of your success."
~ Sun Tzu,
The Art of War
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Google+
chose a wrong ground for competing with
Facebook. Facebook pioneered social networks in 2004 and
gained
the first-mover advantage. It was far ahead as a
single-dimension 'horizontal' social network that was to
facilitate communication globally. Instead of adding a
new 'vertical' dimension and helping people not just
socialize but grow as well, Google+ tried to compete
with Facebook on the same single-dimension ground where
Facebook was much stronger.
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To summarize, Google+
was designed to lose because it has very weak competitive
differentiation strategy against Facebook. They didn't pursue
a tremendous opportunity to make
their social network
two-dimensional and thus win the
competitive battle, and perished
3 years later.
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"You can strike with the
few and be many if you strike
your adversary in his gaps. Seek
out places where the defense is
not strict, the place is not
tightly guarded, the generals
are weak."
~ Sun Tzu,
The Art of War
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A winning strategy? Instead of fighting a much
stronger opponent in their style, create and use a weapon
he is defenseless against. Anyway, the objective is not
to conquer the competitor, but to win users over.
Google+ could have done so by create additional amazing
user value by helping them not just communicate.
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Insights from a Google+ Designer
In his tweets,
Morgan Knutson, a former Google+ designer explained
why Google's social media play failed: it was mostly office
politics. Knutson wrote that
Google+ hadn’t been made in consideration with the Google ecosystem. Google’s product vision of Google+
was based on the fear of losing the race (and all of world’s data)
to
Facebook instead of creating something
genuinely unique. The
team that worked on the product was divided and had no grand
vision.
All the teams worked on their separate modules with no knowledge of
the
whole picture.
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