[hunter23]

I find it ironic that the author is trying to detail core reasons why Google+ failed when they themselves admit they don't use any social media.

While I didn't work on the Google plus team (I was on a different team), the biggest reason in my mind why Google+ failed was motivation. Not a single Google executive on the team had a strong reason for why they should build Google+ besides "we can make a better version of Facebook". There was no real use case.

Facebook, at the time, however had engineers and product managers who were intensely driven and hungry; they were in a fight for their existence against some of the biggest companies in the world. If they failed their company would fail, and they were hugely passionate about what they were doing. For Googlers, it was largely a theoretical intellectual experiment. Tons of Googlers on Emerald Sea didn't even use any of the social media tools and they didn't get "social". To them it was some thing you plug on top of an existing product to increase ad revenue.

If you don't have the drive and you don't understand your users, you aren't going to build something people want.

[mrisoli]

Very cliché, but reminds me a lot of Simon Sinek's famous TED talk about "Start with the why", Facebook was driven by its mission, Google was driven by market share.

OTOH same can't be said about Snap vs Facebook, Facebook simply copying many of Snapchat's features is working out pretty well for them.

[netwanderer3]

That's my thought as well. Google+ seemed like just another "me too" platform. Though Google attempted to steer it into another direction later but it was simply too late by then.

What I found hard to believe was that with all the brightest, smartest, most creative people at Google, yet they couldn't figure out a better use case for the platform during all those years? That should have been easy compared to other much harder problems that Google were able to solve successfully.

Similarly, if we think about it Yelp really has no rights to be in the small business index/listing/reviews space. Google own two biggest weapons in "Search Engine" and "Maps" and they completely dominate these two markets, so why was Yelp allowed to get to where it is today I'll never understand?

I don't know why they still have not done this but if they really want to, Google could easily leverage these two tools plus Google Cloud Platform to turn Google main search page into a Global Store where end users could simply enter a product name into the search box and Google will immediately locate it on Google Maps at various stores near where they are with real time stock availability. Users then can quickly go and pick up the item they want in person at the location they prefer. They don't even have to wait for shipping.

Google could develop an easy and intuitive front-end app for small businesses to list their products and update their stock (or use some kinds of tracking technology like beacon), then tie more advanced machine learning and big data analytics features to their Google Cloud Platform for bigger companies that have the needs for such data.

This helps reducing much friction and shorten the purchase funnel for end users who are searching to buy a specific product. At the moment, users must navigate through a sea of websites of which are mostly irrelevant, even after finding a potential website users again must find their way around the store to see whether it even carries or has the product in stock. Can't find the right product or zero stock availability? Well too bad, start again from scratch!

By reducing these steps, Google can effectively help users save much of their time and quickly locate the product they want right on Google Maps. People do not really care about vendors or companies, they only care about the products as that’s really what they’re looking for. Small businesses will also benefit greatly from features like this one since they won’t have to spend more time and money to locate buyers, now buyers just come to them directly.

Google Search + Maps have just become a global retail store overnight.

[dorgo]

>They don't even have to wait for shipping

I don't mind to wait for shipping. In the next two weeks is ok. I don't even search on Google. I search on Amazon. Btw, what is Yelp?

[Eug894]

Amazon don't work in all countries. And the ability to walk in a retail nearby to look at the product you want is valuable too.

[netwanderer3]

Indeed. Unlike many developed countries which have those big box retail stores available in almost every neighborhood, local commerce activities in developing countries are dominated by smaller businesses, and their stores are often distributed randomly across a city.

In the U.S, you kind of know ahead what brands of retail stores you will be able to find a product, as opposed to some other countries where it's a lot more difficult to locate them due to the lack of specialized retail stores.