[johnnycab]

>Google was at its best a relatively open culture and 2011 is the year they killed other cultural icons such as Google Labs and (unofficially) deprecated 20% time. I think the road to the Google we see today started then.

Thanks for providing a great insight. I kept away from Google+ due to it's initial aggressiveness of opting in and linking it across other services. There was already a growing disillusionment around investing time and effort into various concepts, which ended up getting culled[1]. It was Google Reader, which made me realise not to take any Google service for granted or rely on them long-term and only use them in a disposable format.

[1] https://killedbygoogle.com/

[tracker1]

Reader was the shot that killed any trust in Google's service for me as well... Today it's mostly my gmail account that is mostly bulk mail, fallback search when ddg fails me, and maps on my phone. And even the gmail I've been contemplating how to best get away from it.