This has been the very essence of Google for the past two years. Forcefully assimilating existing services, where users already had data, into G+, changing functionality and terms, and generally leaving users to feel insecure about how privacy and access to their long-held data might or might not change.
What a far cry from '99-'03 Google, which used to release clever and surprising new data-browsing tools, each with a singular purpose, that just worked.
Yeah, I happen to like the integrated Google. When I get GMail confirming a flight, it automatically shows up in my Google Now. I can search for it with "When is my next flight?" I can search my Docs and Gmail both at once.
I happen like how far Google has gotten from those old, random, completely non-integrated days.
Exactly. When Google bought all these companies, it was disappointing to see them sitting as isolated buckets. I mean, did people thing these purchases were done as a Pokemon game? "Yay, Google got all 151 verticals!". How long did they let Blogger sit as a wasteland of spam?
Now? Now Blogger is Picasa for prose, and Picasa is Youtube for still images, and your Plus homepage is your central hub for all the discussion happening on those services. Obviously, Plus has problems, and lots of them. It's far too opinionated for something that's being used as a general-purpose comment-engine. Plus is a good Facebook, but it's a piss-poor Disqus, and Google is using it as Disqus.
But the overall strategy of consolidation? Long overdue.
Google is finally turning their holdings into a single impressive platform instead of a balkanized mess of isolated services.
I don't like the privacy implications, of course. But that's always been Google's business model ever since they launched GMail - they give you something awesome for free and in exchange they get to spy on you to provide targeted ads.
Well, Gmail isn't all that free, in practice. I imagine a lot of the people around here have enough email to have capitulated to Gmail's inevitable demands for cash. I did.
You're overblowing things. All of this madness has really taken place after Schmidt left, because up until '10 or so, Google kind of still embraced the "don't be evil" philosophy.
What a far cry from '99-'03 Google, which used to release clever and surprising new data-browsing tools, each with a singular purpose, that just worked.