My surprise here is not this insight, but why it's taken so long for people (read: tech bloggers) to understand this. Everything Google does is designed to improve their cashcow - their search engine. The introduction of the +1 button PRIOR to the launch of Google+ was the first clue. With FB and Twitter refusing the share their data, social cues (what is being shared and with whom) were a big missing piece. Google+ solves this by being the explicit identity, sharing and relationship management layer to add on top of what is happening below the scenes.
It was initially built as a stand-alone product, and this is where the comparisons with Facebook and misunderstanding of its purpose inevitably grew from. However, Google was playing the long game. It obviously takes even a company with as many devs as Google has to overhaul its existing products. Over the past two years since its launch, we have steadily seen its integration with virtually all of Google's other services appear. Your Google profile is now your Google+ profile, Circle relationships influence your search results, Picasa is morphing into Google+ Photos, Google Local is now Google+ Local, Google+ Hangouts have replaced Messenger... you get the idea.
All this means is that overt use of Google+ itself is not as important to Google as most would think it is. Google itself states that they are happy with its progress - although there is also likely to be some level of rhetoric in that. I believe that they still need it to continue growing, for one reason. It is still the best source of data they have to understand people's relationships. They learned via the ill-fated Google Buzz product that Gmail contacts are not the best indicator of relationships as they lack context. Hence Google+ Circles. The better Google understands who we interact with and why, the better they can personlise their services.
And the endgame? By knowing us perhaps even better than we know ourselves, they hope to make themselves indispensable by not only providing answers to our questions, but by doing so before we realise we want to know. Version 1 of this vision is already available... it's called Google Now.
It was initially built as a stand-alone product, and this is where the comparisons with Facebook and misunderstanding of its purpose inevitably grew from. However, Google was playing the long game. It obviously takes even a company with as many devs as Google has to overhaul its existing products. Over the past two years since its launch, we have steadily seen its integration with virtually all of Google's other services appear. Your Google profile is now your Google+ profile, Circle relationships influence your search results, Picasa is morphing into Google+ Photos, Google Local is now Google+ Local, Google+ Hangouts have replaced Messenger... you get the idea.
All this means is that overt use of Google+ itself is not as important to Google as most would think it is. Google itself states that they are happy with its progress - although there is also likely to be some level of rhetoric in that. I believe that they still need it to continue growing, for one reason. It is still the best source of data they have to understand people's relationships. They learned via the ill-fated Google Buzz product that Gmail contacts are not the best indicator of relationships as they lack context. Hence Google+ Circles. The better Google understands who we interact with and why, the better they can personlise their services.
And the endgame? By knowing us perhaps even better than we know ourselves, they hope to make themselves indispensable by not only providing answers to our questions, but by doing so before we realise we want to know. Version 1 of this vision is already available... it's called Google Now.
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