Google is proving itself to be an unreliable and untrustworthy partner. We're being chucked off G+ as it closes down. So which other Google properties should we leave now and stop investing time and effort into? Because we don't know when Google will decide to just close them down. Here's a short list of Google Products that feel to me like they might be at risk.
- Music
- Photos
- Drive
- Blogger
- Calendar
- News
- GoogleGroups
- Hangouts
- Chromecast Audio
- Wear OS
- Android Auto
- Google Pay
https://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/about/products/
And that's just the consumer stuff. Want to invest time in Google APIs to build into products? Don't.
Blogger? again, won't surprise me if they kill that off too.
I should also say: products change all the time. The come and go and evolve as the market needs. I certainly don't expect Google - or anyone - to maintain a permanent offering of unchanging free-to-use products. I'm just not sure that's a reasonable expectation.
Hangouts + Allo will have some re-work soon, so not sure if anything will remain after...
Part of the problem here is that there aren't many social network systems of the scale and functionality of G+. FB is undoubtedly the leader. There are others that replicate * some * of the functionality.
What about search and email? Quant and ProtonMail?
I curate a small list of friends and then bookmark that feed. So I never see the big feed. If the "close friends" annoy me in any way (eg by clicking on bullshit). They first get removed from the "Close friends" list. If they keep doing it, they get unfriended and blocked.
Problem? What problem?
Google (until recently) was one of the "Good Bad Guys" but it tries to be a PITA, so I'll switch to for search and openstreetmap for maps (unless I want to look at satellite images.
Blogging? www.dreamwidth.org looks like a nice alternative to blogger. Music? www.jamendo.org offers interesting stuff. I expect Google's Play Music to be bundled /combined with Youtube Music sooner or later.
Seriously though, that language is a little excessive, no?
That said, finding alternatives, using them to familiarize yourself with them, making use of Google Takeout regularly (for backups) and testing export to said alternatives wouldn't be a bad idea at all.
This is not the right community for this discussion, please freeze it and post it a backlink to your own stream. Because I feel you didn't mean to introduce noise to the community I'm not doing this without some warning.
https://plus.google.com/+JulianBond23/posts/EhcAN1vQdCQ