Google – Google minus.

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Reddit and Twitter look like more realistic targets than Facebook.

• Google has announced a significant restructuring of Google + removing the focus on social networking and instead targeting interests (collections) and communities.
• There is no doubt that Google + has been a huge disappointment and despite substantial investment it has failed to gain any meaningful traction.
• Google can claim hundreds of millions of users thanks to the integrated nature of its services but when one looks at usage of Google +, there is only empty desert.
• The restructuring of Google + is an admission that Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and so on have won the social networking space meaning that it needs to become something different.
• The new aim of Google + is to focus on two areas collections and communities.
  • Collections groups users’ posts around different types of interests which other users can choose to follow.
  • Communities is similar to collections except that it encourages more active discussion of the various topics and interests that the community is based around. Users belong to a community rather than follow it.
• With this change it is clear that Google is moving out from social networking and instead focusing on the much softer target of content discovery and online discussions.
• Hence, instead of competition with Facebook, Google is now going after Reddit, Medium, Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter and so on.
• These companies are not without their own problems and Reddit and Twitter at the moment look like particularly soft targets.
• However, this means that Google’s position in Digital Life now looks substantially weaker as it is no longer competing in the very important social networking space.
• Combine this with Google’s absence in gaming and suddenly its ecosystem looks much weaker in the long-term.
• I do not think that this is going to cause a dent in Google’s advertising revenues today but it raises question marks about Google’s ability to grow its revenues in the long-term.
• Currently, Google monetises the data that it collects from its Digital Life services through search but this is likely to change.
• As monetisation mechanisms become more sophisticated, I see monetisation occurring more directly within the Digital Life services themselves.
• This means that what the ecosystem understands about the user will be monetised more directly through maps, video, games and so on.
• An ecosystem without the services to both understand the user and monetise the traffic, will have real problems in securing long-term growth.
• Hence, I am concerned that Google’s weakness in both gaming and social networking will cause long-term growth problems.
• Add this to all of the other problems that Google currently faces (see here) and I can’t see any reason to remain involved with the shares.
• I would prefer Microsoft, Samsung or even Apple to Google.