WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.980 So, April 2nd, 2019. Does that date, does it 00:00:05.980 --> 00:00:08.179 ring a bell for you at all? For most people, 00:00:08.179 --> 00:00:09.919 probably not, right? It was just another Tuesday. 00:00:10.179 --> 00:00:11.859 Yeah, I guess so. You know, maybe you grabbed 00:00:11.859 --> 00:00:15.119 a sandwich, went to the gym. But in the history 00:00:15.119 --> 00:00:17.300 of the internet, and I mean specifically in the, 00:00:17.399 --> 00:00:20.260 you know, the big dusty annals of Silicon Valley 00:00:20.260 --> 00:00:24.559 history, it marks the end of a very specific, 00:00:24.719 --> 00:00:28.510 and I have to say a very... expensive and chaotic 00:00:28.510 --> 00:00:32.009 era. That is the day Google Plus was officially 00:00:32.009 --> 00:00:33.969 shut down for consumers. Oh, that's the one. 00:00:34.109 --> 00:00:36.070 The day they finally pulled the plug, wiped the 00:00:36.070 --> 00:00:39.549 servers, and all those profiles just vanished 00:00:39.549 --> 00:00:41.689 into the ether. It's the death of a giant, really, 00:00:41.789 --> 00:00:43.990 or at least what was supposed to be a giant. 00:00:44.049 --> 00:00:45.990 Right. It's the final chapter in a story that 00:00:45.990 --> 00:00:48.229 cost, I mean, hundreds of millions of dollars 00:00:48.229 --> 00:00:50.710 and involves some of the absolute smartest engineers 00:00:50.710 --> 00:00:53.490 on the planet. It's incredible. And that's exactly 00:00:53.490 --> 00:00:55.710 what we're unpacking in this deep dive. We're 00:00:55.710 --> 00:00:57.630 going to look at the rise and I guess the spectacular 00:00:57.630 --> 00:01:01.149 fall of Google Plus A. Which was their fourth 00:01:01.149 --> 00:01:03.630 attempt. Right. Their fourth. And let's be honest, 00:01:03.750 --> 00:01:06.689 by far their most ambitious attempt at building 00:01:06.689 --> 00:01:09.430 a social network. This was not a side project. 00:01:09.750 --> 00:01:12.329 No, no. This was a company betting initiative. 00:01:12.469 --> 00:01:16.560 All hands on deck. It is such a fascinating case 00:01:16.560 --> 00:01:20.459 study because of the just the sheer scale of 00:01:20.459 --> 00:01:22.840 the contradiction here. The paradox. Yeah. You're 00:01:22.840 --> 00:01:26.260 looking at a platform that on paper was reporting 00:01:26.260 --> 00:01:28.879 hundreds of millions of active users. At one 00:01:28.879 --> 00:01:31.239 point, it was technically the second largest 00:01:31.239 --> 00:01:33.359 social network in the world. I mean, it was nipping 00:01:33.359 --> 00:01:35.819 at Facebook's heels, numerically speaking. And 00:01:35.819 --> 00:01:38.000 yet at the exact same time, what was the label 00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:40.840 everyone used? A ghost town. A ghost town. Yeah. 00:01:40.900 --> 00:01:42.700 That's the central mystery we have to explore. 00:01:43.239 --> 00:01:45.260 How do you have half a billion users and yet 00:01:45.260 --> 00:01:48.620 no one is there? How is the user base larger 00:01:48.620 --> 00:01:51.019 than the entire population of the United States? 00:01:51.200 --> 00:01:54.659 But the cultural impact is like a tumbleweed 00:01:54.659 --> 00:01:56.500 blowing through an empty street. It's an amazing 00:01:56.500 --> 00:01:58.680 question. It's such a wild story. And we're not 00:01:58.680 --> 00:02:01.500 just talking about a failed website here. We're 00:02:01.500 --> 00:02:03.560 going to get into a full -blown corporate war 00:02:03.560 --> 00:02:06.040 with Facebook. A really controversial real names 00:02:06.040 --> 00:02:09.379 policy that just made people furious. Oh, the 00:02:09.379 --> 00:02:13.710 NIMWARS. Yes. And... The Bob army invading YouTube, 00:02:13.870 --> 00:02:15.909 which is a story I honestly cannot wait to get 00:02:15.909 --> 00:02:18.389 into. And of course, you can't forget the final 00:02:18.389 --> 00:02:20.870 nail in the coffin. The massive data breach. 00:02:21.090 --> 00:02:24.370 The security failure that basically gave Google 00:02:24.370 --> 00:02:27.789 the excuse they needed to finally, you know, 00:02:27.789 --> 00:02:30.509 put the whole thing out of its misery. OK, so 00:02:30.509 --> 00:02:32.669 let's rewind. Yeah. We have to set the stage. 00:02:32.830 --> 00:02:35.449 Let's go all the way back to 2011. What was the 00:02:35.449 --> 00:02:39.080 vibe in the tech world then? Well. In a word, 00:02:39.120 --> 00:02:41.599 fear, at least, you know, inside the Googleplex 00:02:41.599 --> 00:02:43.680 in Mountain View. Oh, yeah. You got to remember, 00:02:43.840 --> 00:02:46.120 2011, the Internet was just a completely different 00:02:46.120 --> 00:02:48.699 landscape. Facebook wasn't just like a popular 00:02:48.699 --> 00:02:50.919 site. Right. It was becoming the Internet for 00:02:50.919 --> 00:02:53.800 a huge, huge chunk of the population. Because 00:02:53.800 --> 00:02:56.000 Google's whole mission was, what, to organize 00:02:56.000 --> 00:02:58.120 the world's information. Exactly. Google owned 00:02:58.120 --> 00:03:00.659 the what? You want to know the capital of Peru? 00:03:00.879 --> 00:03:03.460 You ask Google. You want a recipe for lasagna? 00:03:03.680 --> 00:03:06.340 Google, they had the graph of information. But 00:03:06.340 --> 00:03:09.610 Facebook. Facebook was organizing the world's 00:03:09.610 --> 00:03:12.449 people. They owned the who. And that terrified 00:03:12.449 --> 00:03:15.050 Google. It was a genuine existential threat. 00:03:15.129 --> 00:03:17.789 Think about it. If people stop searching for 00:03:17.789 --> 00:03:21.289 best pizza in New York on Google and they just 00:03:21.289 --> 00:03:22.909 start asking their friends on Facebook, hey, 00:03:22.969 --> 00:03:25.349 where should I get dinner tonight? Then Google's 00:03:25.349 --> 00:03:27.669 whole business model starts to crumble. The whole 00:03:27.669 --> 00:03:31.250 thing. Their model is based on serving ads against 00:03:31.250 --> 00:03:34.530 search intent. If the intent moves to a walled 00:03:34.530 --> 00:03:36.830 garden like Facebook, they're in big trouble. 00:03:37.259 --> 00:03:39.120 So they didn't just want a social network for 00:03:39.120 --> 00:03:42.240 fun or to be cool. No, they needed the data. 00:03:42.379 --> 00:03:44.419 They needed what they called the social graph. 00:03:44.639 --> 00:03:46.960 They had to know who you knew, who you trusted, 00:03:47.139 --> 00:03:49.620 what your relationships were. Without that, they 00:03:49.620 --> 00:03:51.860 were basically flying blind into the new era 00:03:51.860 --> 00:03:54.750 of the web. There's this book by a former Facebook 00:03:54.750 --> 00:03:57.509 employee, Antonio Garcia Martinez. It's called 00:03:57.509 --> 00:04:01.169 Chaos Monkeys. Oh, a fantastic book. And he actually 00:04:01.169 --> 00:04:04.530 describes the reaction inside Facebook when Google 00:04:04.530 --> 00:04:07.729 Plus launched. The lockdown story. This is like 00:04:07.729 --> 00:04:10.909 Silicon Valley legend at this point. It is. So 00:04:10.909 --> 00:04:12.849 tell us about that. Because we usually think 00:04:12.849 --> 00:04:15.729 of Google as the big bad wolf. But in this story, 00:04:15.889 --> 00:04:19.089 Facebook was the one sweating. oh they were panicking 00:04:19.089 --> 00:04:22.589 according to the book the moment google plus 00:04:22.589 --> 00:04:26.019 was announced Mark Zuckerberg initiated a company 00:04:26.019 --> 00:04:28.519 -wide lockdown. And that wasn't just a figure 00:04:28.519 --> 00:04:30.660 of speech. Not at all. It was like an air raid 00:04:30.660 --> 00:04:33.579 siren went off inside the company. The implication 00:04:33.579 --> 00:04:36.420 was that Google, with its infinite money, its 00:04:36.420 --> 00:04:38.740 infinite resources, and literally the smartest 00:04:38.740 --> 00:04:41.480 engineers in the world, was finally coming for 00:04:41.480 --> 00:04:43.620 them. So nobody leaves the building until we 00:04:43.620 --> 00:04:46.439 kill this thing. Pretty much. Zuckerberg apparently 00:04:46.439 --> 00:04:49.319 gathered all the employees around this famous 00:04:49.319 --> 00:04:53.220 lockdown sign, and he gave a speech. And he channeled 00:04:53.220 --> 00:04:55.480 Cato the Elder. The Roman senator. Yeah, the 00:04:55.480 --> 00:04:58.019 one who ended every single speech with, Carthage 00:04:58.019 --> 00:05:01.439 must be destroyed. And he saw Google as Carthage. 00:05:01.560 --> 00:05:04.879 He saw it as a war for their very survival. Employees 00:05:04.879 --> 00:05:06.620 were basically told to dedicate all their time, 00:05:06.680 --> 00:05:09.480 nights, weekends, everything, to bringing Facebook's 00:05:09.480 --> 00:05:11.540 features up to par with what Google was doing. 00:05:11.860 --> 00:05:14.100 They genuinely thought Google might just crush 00:05:14.100 --> 00:05:16.399 them. It's so funny in retrospect, isn't it? 00:05:16.439 --> 00:05:18.360 Yeah. Knowing how it all played out. It really 00:05:18.360 --> 00:05:20.860 is. But at the time, Google already had a bit 00:05:20.860 --> 00:05:23.759 of a... a graveyard of social attempts right 00:05:23.759 --> 00:05:26.180 this wasn't their first rodeo Not at all. They 00:05:26.180 --> 00:05:29.620 had this string of failures that really set the 00:05:29.620 --> 00:05:32.339 stage for why Google Plus just had to succeed. 00:05:32.879 --> 00:05:36.300 I mean, first we had Google Wave. RIP Wave. Yeah. 00:05:36.339 --> 00:05:38.579 I still maintain Wave was just ahead of its time. 00:05:38.620 --> 00:05:40.879 It was basically Slack before Slack existed. 00:05:41.040 --> 00:05:43.819 It was incredibly complex, though. It tried to 00:05:43.819 --> 00:05:46.220 be email and instant messaging and a collaboration 00:05:46.220 --> 00:05:48.379 tool all at once, and I think it just confused 00:05:48.379 --> 00:05:50.620 everybody. Fair enough. Then there was Google 00:05:50.620 --> 00:05:54.720 Buzz. Oh, Buzz. The privacy disaster. That was 00:05:54.720 --> 00:05:56.680 a huge one, right? It was built into Gmail. A 00:05:56.680 --> 00:05:59.079 huge disaster. It launched inside Gmail and it 00:05:59.079 --> 00:06:00.980 automatically made you follow the people you 00:06:00.980 --> 00:06:03.100 emailed the most. Oh, no. Which sounds kind of 00:06:03.100 --> 00:06:05.459 convenient until you realize that people email 00:06:05.459 --> 00:06:08.459 their ex -spouses, their therapists, their business 00:06:08.459 --> 00:06:11.079 rivals, maybe a secret lover. And it just exposed 00:06:11.079 --> 00:06:12.819 all those private networks to the public. It 00:06:12.819 --> 00:06:16.120 did. And they got sued for it big time. And then, 00:06:16.120 --> 00:06:18.139 of course, there was Orkut. I actually loved 00:06:18.139 --> 00:06:20.879 Orkut. But it was mostly big in Brazil and India, 00:06:20.980 --> 00:06:23.339 wasn't it? Huge in Brazil and India. It was a 00:06:23.339 --> 00:06:26.759 genuine cultural phenomenon there. But it never, 00:06:26.959 --> 00:06:30.360 ever captured the U .S. market. And for a U .S.-centric 00:06:30.360 --> 00:06:32.360 company like Google, that just wasn't enough. 00:06:32.620 --> 00:06:35.779 So by June 28, 2011, the pressure's on. Larry 00:06:35.779 --> 00:06:38.339 Page had just taken over as CEO, and he made 00:06:38.339 --> 00:06:41.620 social a top, top priority. Enter Google plus 00:06:41.620 --> 00:06:45.000 Brugas. It was led by two executives, Vitka Notra 00:06:45.000 --> 00:06:47.300 and Bradley Horowitz. And the message from the 00:06:47.300 --> 00:06:50.879 top was crystal clear. This is the one that is 00:06:50.879 --> 00:06:52.980 going to work. This is not another side project. 00:06:53.100 --> 00:06:55.459 And Vic Gondotra was a very charismatic leader, 00:06:55.639 --> 00:06:57.779 right? He was the public face of this. He was. 00:06:57.800 --> 00:06:59.879 He was the one who really pushed this vision. 00:06:59.980 --> 00:07:02.100 And the pitch wasn't just, you know, Facebook, 00:07:02.279 --> 00:07:03.800 but with a different color scheme. They had a 00:07:03.800 --> 00:07:06.300 very specific philosophy. This is the social 00:07:06.300 --> 00:07:08.579 layer concept. OK, let's unpack this, because 00:07:08.579 --> 00:07:10.259 I really think it's the key to understanding 00:07:10.259 --> 00:07:13.000 both why it was so ambitious and why it ultimately 00:07:13.000 --> 00:07:16.410 failed. It absolutely is. Vik Gundotra and his 00:07:16.410 --> 00:07:18.689 team, they didn't just want to build another 00:07:18.689 --> 00:07:21.790 destination website like Facebook .com, where 00:07:21.790 --> 00:07:24.290 you scroll for 20 minutes and then you leave. 00:07:24.370 --> 00:07:28.139 They wanted to build... a social layer that would 00:07:28.139 --> 00:07:31.399 sit on top of literally everything google did 00:07:31.399 --> 00:07:34.600 like a blanket just thrown over the entire google 00:07:34.600 --> 00:07:37.360 ecosystem that's the perfect metaphor think about 00:07:37.360 --> 00:07:39.759 your average google usage you're using search 00:07:39.759 --> 00:07:43.040 you're using maps gmail youtube drive android 00:07:43.040 --> 00:07:44.759 right they're all separate things but the idea 00:07:44.759 --> 00:07:46.860 was that google plus would be the connective 00:07:46.860 --> 00:07:49.139 tissue you wouldn't just be a youtube watcher 00:07:49.139 --> 00:07:51.779 or a gmail user anymore you would be a google 00:07:51.779 --> 00:07:54.360 plus user who just happened to be checking their 00:07:54.360 --> 00:07:56.930 email so that little red notification bell that 00:07:56.930 --> 00:07:59.709 we all remember that would follow you from your 00:07:59.709 --> 00:08:01.670 email to your map to your search result that 00:08:01.670 --> 00:08:03.910 was the visual representation of it a single 00:08:03.910 --> 00:08:07.850 unified identity if you shared a location from 00:08:07.850 --> 00:08:10.629 maps you did it through google plus seri if you 00:08:10.629 --> 00:08:12.629 commented on a youtube video you did it through 00:08:12.629 --> 00:08:15.589 google plus seri it was this attempt to unify 00:08:15.589 --> 00:08:19.220 all these separate disparate products under one 00:08:19.220 --> 00:08:22.660 single social umbrella. Which, you know, from 00:08:22.660 --> 00:08:24.720 a corporate strategy perspective, it's actually 00:08:24.720 --> 00:08:26.600 kind of brilliant. You tie all your assets together. 00:08:26.839 --> 00:08:30.360 But from a user perspective. It felt a little 00:08:30.360 --> 00:08:33.360 invasive. To say the least. But before we get 00:08:33.360 --> 00:08:35.320 to the backlash, we should probably give credit 00:08:35.320 --> 00:08:38.759 where credit is due. We should. The product itself, 00:08:39.100 --> 00:08:42.659 I mean, the actual interface of Google plus Matt. 00:08:43.419 --> 00:08:45.720 It was full of some really interesting, even 00:08:45.720 --> 00:08:48.100 groundbreaking innovations. Oh, for sure. The 00:08:48.100 --> 00:08:50.179 biggest one being circles. Circles. That was 00:08:50.179 --> 00:08:51.720 the core differentiator, wasn't it? The thing 00:08:51.720 --> 00:08:54.399 they hung their entire hat on. It was. And I 00:08:54.399 --> 00:08:56.639 remember this so vividly. The interface was actually 00:08:56.639 --> 00:08:59.220 like really satisfying. You had these little 00:08:59.220 --> 00:09:02.460 bubbles that represented your friends. You would 00:09:02.460 --> 00:09:05.419 physically or will digitally drag and drop them 00:09:05.419 --> 00:09:08.580 into these circles. Friends, family. And there 00:09:08.580 --> 00:09:10.620 was a real logic to it, a kind of sociological 00:09:10.620 --> 00:09:12.559 logic. You have to think about Facebook at the 00:09:12.559 --> 00:09:15.539 time. Their model was totally reciprocal and 00:09:15.539 --> 00:09:18.159 binary. I friend you, you friend me, we are now 00:09:18.159 --> 00:09:20.299 friends, full stop. Yeah, right. And it doesn't 00:09:20.299 --> 00:09:21.700 matter if you're my best friend from kindergarten 00:09:21.700 --> 00:09:24.299 or, you know, my boss who I'm secretly terrified 00:09:24.299 --> 00:09:27.580 of. You're both in the exact same bucket. And 00:09:27.580 --> 00:09:30.480 that creates what sociologists call... Context 00:09:30.480 --> 00:09:33.879 collapse. It means all your different social 00:09:33.879 --> 00:09:36.840 contexts, your work life, your family life, your 00:09:36.840 --> 00:09:39.919 party life, they all just collapse into a single 00:09:39.919 --> 00:09:43.460 feed. And that creates a chilling effect. Because 00:09:43.460 --> 00:09:44.940 you don't want to share your photos from the 00:09:44.940 --> 00:09:47.179 bar on Saturday night because your boss might 00:09:47.179 --> 00:09:49.559 see them. Exactly. And you don't want to share 00:09:49.559 --> 00:09:51.799 some boring article about spreadsheets because 00:09:51.799 --> 00:09:53.659 all your friends from college will be bored to 00:09:53.659 --> 00:09:56.559 death. So you end up just sharing nothing. Or 00:09:56.559 --> 00:09:59.440 just really safe vanilla stuff like happy birthday, 00:09:59.519 --> 00:10:02.899 Aunt Carol. Precisely. And circles was Google's 00:10:02.899 --> 00:10:05.500 way of saying, hey, social life isn't binary. 00:10:05.759 --> 00:10:07.740 You share different things with different groups 00:10:07.740 --> 00:10:10.340 of people. So you should be able to post a photo 00:10:10.340 --> 00:10:13.600 just to your college buddies circle and an article 00:10:13.600 --> 00:10:16.340 just to your work colleagues circle. It was smart. 00:10:16.480 --> 00:10:19.360 I mean, it really acknowledged nuance. It was 00:10:19.360 --> 00:10:21.799 very smart. The problem, which I think we all 00:10:21.799 --> 00:10:24.360 realized pretty quickly, is that managing all 00:10:24.360 --> 00:10:29.480 that nuance. It's work. That's the catch, isn't 00:10:29.480 --> 00:10:32.000 it? It requires cognitive load. You have to actually 00:10:32.000 --> 00:10:34.360 sit there and sort every single human being, 00:10:34.399 --> 00:10:38.279 you know, into a specific bucket. Yeah. Is Dave 00:10:38.279 --> 00:10:41.460 a friend or is he an acquaintance? And if I put 00:10:41.460 --> 00:10:43.970 him in acquaintance, is he going to know? Is 00:10:43.970 --> 00:10:45.830 he going to be offended? It's stressful. Dragging 00:10:45.830 --> 00:10:48.149 people into circles was fun for like the first 00:10:48.149 --> 00:10:50.970 10 minutes because the animation was cool and 00:10:50.970 --> 00:10:53.009 made that little clunk sound. I remember that. 00:10:53.169 --> 00:10:55.409 But then it just felt like digital filing. It 00:10:55.409 --> 00:10:57.610 felt like doing your taxes. Whereas Facebook, 00:10:57.730 --> 00:11:00.690 for all its problems, was just low friction. 00:11:00.809 --> 00:11:03.450 You add someone, you're done. Google Plus required 00:11:03.450 --> 00:11:05.629 you to be the librarian of your own social life. 00:11:05.750 --> 00:11:08.429 Exactly. But they had other features, too, that 00:11:08.429 --> 00:11:10.529 were genuinely ahead of their time. Let's talk 00:11:10.529 --> 00:11:13.480 about Hangouts. Okay, Hangouts was legit amazing. 00:11:13.580 --> 00:11:16.360 This was 2011. Yeah, this was years before Zoom 00:11:16.360 --> 00:11:20.039 became a verb. Years. At the time, if you wanted 00:11:20.039 --> 00:11:22.759 to do a video chat, you used Skype. And Skype 00:11:22.759 --> 00:11:24.899 was mostly one -to -one unless you wanted to 00:11:24.899 --> 00:11:27.600 pay for their premium features. Right. Hangouts 00:11:27.600 --> 00:11:31.279 offered multi -person video chat for free right 00:11:31.279 --> 00:11:34.370 in the browser. No clunky downloads. And people 00:11:34.370 --> 00:11:36.669 really used it. I remember recording podcasts 00:11:36.669 --> 00:11:39.750 on Hangouts. I knew Dungeons and Dragons groups 00:11:39.750 --> 00:11:42.269 that ran their entire campaigns on Hangouts. 00:11:42.370 --> 00:11:45.730 It was built on early WebRTC technology. It was 00:11:45.730 --> 00:11:47.549 pretty seamless. You could have 10 people on 00:11:47.549 --> 00:11:50.830 a call. It really democratized video conferencing 00:11:50.830 --> 00:11:53.610 for consumers. That was a real stickiness factor 00:11:53.610 --> 00:11:56.110 that Google Plus had over Facebook at the time. 00:11:56.230 --> 00:11:59.360 And then there was photos. The unsung hero. Or, 00:11:59.379 --> 00:12:01.299 well, maybe the sung hero, since it's the part 00:12:01.299 --> 00:12:03.639 that actually survived. True. They had cloud 00:12:03.639 --> 00:12:06.080 -based albums and these really cool editing tools. 00:12:06.279 --> 00:12:08.519 Do you remember Auto Awesome? I do. It sounded 00:12:08.519 --> 00:12:10.279 like a silly marketing gimmick, but it was actually 00:12:10.279 --> 00:12:12.220 some pretty powerful machine learning under the 00:12:12.220 --> 00:12:14.940 hood. How did that work again? You'd upload a 00:12:14.940 --> 00:12:17.220 burst of photos, say like five pictures of your 00:12:17.220 --> 00:12:20.340 kid jumping into a swimming pool. Google servers 00:12:20.340 --> 00:12:23.080 would analyze them and then automatically stitch 00:12:23.080 --> 00:12:25.879 them together into a GIF animation. Oh, right. 00:12:26.200 --> 00:12:28.340 Or if you took a group photo and somebody was 00:12:28.340 --> 00:12:30.000 blinking in one frame, but they were smiling 00:12:30.000 --> 00:12:32.620 in another, it could merge them to create like 00:12:32.620 --> 00:12:34.679 the perfect shot where everyone looks good. It 00:12:34.679 --> 00:12:36.740 felt like magic at the time. It was computational 00:12:36.740 --> 00:12:38.879 photography before that was even a buzzword. 00:12:38.980 --> 00:12:41.100 It really was. And that technology was highly, 00:12:41.159 --> 00:12:43.850 highly praised. A lot of professional... Photographers 00:12:43.850 --> 00:12:47.090 actually flocked to Google +, just because the 00:12:47.090 --> 00:12:49.490 image compression was so much better than Facebook's. 00:12:49.490 --> 00:12:51.450 Your photos just looked better there. And then 00:12:51.450 --> 00:12:54.110 we had the plus one button. Their answer to the 00:12:54.110 --> 00:12:56.429 like button. But it wasn't just for posts inside 00:12:56.429 --> 00:12:59.669 Google +, was it? No, and this goes right back 00:12:59.669 --> 00:13:02.470 to that social layer concept. The plus one button 00:13:02.470 --> 00:13:04.710 was designed to be spread all across the web. 00:13:04.889 --> 00:13:07.610 You'd see it on news sites, on blogs, on e -commerce 00:13:07.610 --> 00:13:10.539 stores. The idea was that you could recommend 00:13:10.539 --> 00:13:13.779 content across the entire Internet and all of 00:13:13.779 --> 00:13:16.559 that data would feed back into Google's search 00:13:16.559 --> 00:13:18.620 and social graph. It was like they were trying 00:13:18.620 --> 00:13:20.700 to paint the entire Web with their own colors. 00:13:20.820 --> 00:13:22.860 That's a great way to put it. And there was one 00:13:22.860 --> 00:13:26.179 more thing. Ah, Sparks. I totally forgot about 00:13:26.179 --> 00:13:28.879 Sparks. Most people did. It was a feature that 00:13:28.879 --> 00:13:32.659 was removed by, I think, November of 2012. It 00:13:32.659 --> 00:13:35.279 was basically a front end for Google search that 00:13:35.279 --> 00:13:37.759 was designed to find shareable topics. Oh, to 00:13:37.759 --> 00:13:40.019 solve the empty feed problem. Exactly. You pick 00:13:40.019 --> 00:13:43.259 an interest like cycling or baking, and it would 00:13:43.259 --> 00:13:45.500 just feed you articles to share with your circles. 00:13:45.639 --> 00:13:48.620 It never really took off. So on paper, this sounds 00:13:48.620 --> 00:13:51.039 amazing. You've got better privacy controls with 00:13:51.039 --> 00:13:53.379 circles. You've got better video with Hangouts, 00:13:53.379 --> 00:13:56.100 better photo tools, and the full might of Google 00:13:56.100 --> 00:13:58.360 search behind it. Right. And the launch numbers, 00:13:58.480 --> 00:14:00.379 they reflected that excitement, didn't they? 00:14:00.440 --> 00:14:02.960 Oh, they did. The growth was explosive. I mean, 00:14:02.980 --> 00:14:05.340 historic, really. Two weeks after it launched, 00:14:05.580 --> 00:14:09.899 they had 10 million users. Wow. Two weeks. By 00:14:09.899 --> 00:14:11.879 the end of 2011, so just a few months later, 00:14:12.100 --> 00:14:15.899 90 million. That is incredibly fast. It was the 00:14:15.899 --> 00:14:18.940 fastest uptake of a social network ever up to 00:14:18.940 --> 00:14:22.899 that point. And by October 2013, they were reporting 00:14:22.899 --> 00:14:28.620 540 million monthly active users. 540 million. 00:14:28.879 --> 00:14:33.120 Half a billion people. So if you just hear that 00:14:33.120 --> 00:14:35.679 number, you'd think game over, Facebook. You'd 00:14:35.679 --> 00:14:37.840 think the war was won. You absolutely would. 00:14:38.039 --> 00:14:40.059 But this is where we have to put on our detective 00:14:40.059 --> 00:14:42.679 hats and really dig into that ghost town reality 00:14:42.679 --> 00:14:45.620 check. Right. Because in the tech world, the 00:14:45.620 --> 00:14:48.279 definition of an active user can be, let's say, 00:14:48.340 --> 00:14:50.279 malleable. It's like the difference between having 00:14:50.279 --> 00:14:52.679 a gym membership and actually doing a squat. 00:14:53.039 --> 00:14:54.639 Two very different things. That's the perfect 00:14:54.639 --> 00:14:56.960 analogy. There's a famous set of data that came 00:14:56.960 --> 00:14:59.799 out from Comscore in January 2012. This was about 00:14:59.799 --> 00:15:02.120 six months after the launch. Really? They looked 00:15:02.120 --> 00:15:04.399 at the average time a user spent on the site 00:15:04.399 --> 00:15:07.340 per month. Not just did you log in, but how long 00:15:07.340 --> 00:15:09.500 did you actually stay? Okay, hit me with a comparison. 00:15:09.779 --> 00:15:12.000 Facebook versus Google plus Fort. All right. 00:15:12.039 --> 00:15:14.580 On Facebook, the average user was spending seven 00:15:14.580 --> 00:15:16.519 and a half hours per month. Seven and a half 00:15:16.519 --> 00:15:19.299 hours. Okay. That's a lot of scrolling. It is. 00:15:19.399 --> 00:15:23.779 And on Google Plus, 3 .3 minutes. Minutes. Minutes. 00:15:23.779 --> 00:15:26.799 Wait, hold on. 3 .3 minutes per month. Per month. 00:15:26.840 --> 00:15:29.299 That's barely enough time to load the page. That's 00:15:29.299 --> 00:15:30.980 like you accidentally click a link, realize where 00:15:30.980 --> 00:15:32.639 you are, and immediately close the tab. That 00:15:32.639 --> 00:15:34.820 is essentially what was happening. And that was 00:15:34.820 --> 00:15:38.179 the engagement gap. And then in February 2014, 00:15:38.740 --> 00:15:42.340 the New York Times ran this huge article that 00:15:42.340 --> 00:15:45.679 officially likened Google Plus to a ghost town. 00:15:45.860 --> 00:15:48.009 And they had data to back that up. They did. 00:15:48.149 --> 00:15:50.789 They noted that nearly half of the so -called 00:15:50.789 --> 00:15:54.149 active users didn't actually visit the site at 00:15:54.149 --> 00:15:57.809 all. So how could Google possibly claim 540 million 00:15:57.809 --> 00:16:00.330 users if nobody was visiting? I mean, were they 00:16:00.330 --> 00:16:03.490 just lying? Not lying, exactly, but defining 00:16:03.490 --> 00:16:06.750 user in a way that served their narrative. It 00:16:06.750 --> 00:16:09.309 goes right back to the social layer. If you signed 00:16:09.309 --> 00:16:10.809 up for Gmail, what happened? You got a Google 00:16:10.809 --> 00:16:13.570 Plus account automatically. If you commented 00:16:13.570 --> 00:16:15.490 on a YouTube video, boom, you were technically 00:16:15.490 --> 00:16:18.049 using Google Plus way. If you click the plus 00:16:18.049 --> 00:16:20.230 one button on some random blog you were reading, 00:16:20.330 --> 00:16:22.850 that counted as a social interaction. I see. 00:16:22.889 --> 00:16:24.529 So they were basically inflating the numbers. 00:16:25.039 --> 00:16:27.179 by counting anyone who even touched a Google 00:16:27.179 --> 00:16:29.860 product as a social user. And Google's defense 00:16:29.860 --> 00:16:32.580 was, you know, the value isn't just in the stream 00:16:32.580 --> 00:16:34.740 the news feed part, but in gathering all this 00:16:34.740 --> 00:16:37.580 identity data across all of our services, we're 00:16:37.580 --> 00:16:40.179 unifying the experience. But to the outside world, 00:16:40.320 --> 00:16:42.879 and maybe more critically to advertisers, it 00:16:42.879 --> 00:16:45.100 just looked like an empty stadium. You can force 00:16:45.100 --> 00:16:47.320 everyone to have a ticket, but you can't force 00:16:47.320 --> 00:16:49.919 them to actually watch the game. Exactly. And 00:16:49.919 --> 00:16:51.519 it wasn't just that it was empty. The people 00:16:51.519 --> 00:16:55.320 who were there, well... Google managed to make 00:16:55.320 --> 00:16:59.200 a lot of them really, really angry. Which brings 00:16:59.200 --> 00:17:01.600 us to the controversies. And there were a few, 00:17:01.759 --> 00:17:04.259 but the biggest one early on, the one that really 00:17:04.259 --> 00:17:07.319 poisoned the well from the start, was the NIMWARS. 00:17:08.019 --> 00:17:11.279 NIMWARS. The War on Pseudonyms. This was a massive 00:17:11.279 --> 00:17:13.480 ideological battle. When they launched in July 00:17:13.480 --> 00:17:17.140 2011, Google Plus had a strict policy. You had 00:17:17.140 --> 00:17:19.039 to use your real name, like the name on your 00:17:19.039 --> 00:17:22.240 driver's license. Which just seems very strict, 00:17:22.339 --> 00:17:25.029 doesn't it? Incredibly strict. And the enforcement 00:17:25.029 --> 00:17:27.130 was really aggressive. Accounts were getting 00:17:27.130 --> 00:17:29.250 suspended left and right if they used pseudonyms 00:17:29.250 --> 00:17:32.210 or nicknames or even stage names. So if I'm a 00:17:32.210 --> 00:17:35.769 gamer and my handle is Dragonslayer99, I can't 00:17:35.769 --> 00:17:39.349 be Dragonslayer99 on Google Plus Home. You have 00:17:39.349 --> 00:17:41.710 to be John Smith. And if you're a musician known 00:17:41.710 --> 00:17:44.670 to the world as Lady Gaga... You have to be Stefani 00:17:44.670 --> 00:17:46.630 Germanotta. And this went so much deeper than 00:17:46.630 --> 00:17:48.650 just gamers and pop stars, right? I mean, think 00:17:48.650 --> 00:17:51.329 about political activists. For sure. Think about 00:17:51.329 --> 00:17:53.990 people living in dangerous political climates 00:17:53.990 --> 00:17:57.150 who absolutely need anonymity to speak freely. 00:17:57.589 --> 00:18:00.230 Or think about victims of domestic abuse who 00:18:00.230 --> 00:18:02.549 do not want to be found by their abusers. Oh, 00:18:02.549 --> 00:18:05.500 right. It's a huge safety issue. A massive one. 00:18:05.579 --> 00:18:07.819 It was a massive backlash about privacy and safety. 00:18:08.319 --> 00:18:11.160 Google's logic was that they wanted a clean environment 00:18:11.160 --> 00:18:14.039 for advertisers. You know, real people, real 00:18:14.039 --> 00:18:16.980 data, high accountability. They thought anonymity 00:18:16.980 --> 00:18:19.259 just bred toxicity. But the Internet culture 00:18:19.259 --> 00:18:21.380 just revolted against that. Completely. They 00:18:21.380 --> 00:18:24.160 saw it as Google trying to impose some kind of 00:18:24.160 --> 00:18:26.920 corporate ID card on the wild, messy web. So 00:18:26.920 --> 00:18:29.859 they backed down. Eventually. But it was a really 00:18:29.859 --> 00:18:32.839 slow, painful retreat. They started supporting 00:18:32.839 --> 00:18:36.039 pseudonyms in January 2012. And then by July 00:18:36.039 --> 00:18:39.000 2014, they finally dropped the name restriction 00:18:39.000 --> 00:18:42.279 entirely. But the damage was done. By then, the 00:18:42.279 --> 00:18:44.720 reputation of the platform was set. It was seen 00:18:44.720 --> 00:18:47.400 as the man. It was the narc at the party who's 00:18:47.400 --> 00:18:49.640 asking to see your ID. And speaking of being 00:18:49.640 --> 00:18:52.500 hostile to Internet culture. Yeah. We have to 00:18:52.500 --> 00:18:55.000 talk about YouTube. The 2013 integration disaster. 00:18:55.220 --> 00:18:57.259 This is one for the history books. This might 00:18:57.259 --> 00:18:59.400 be the moment I remember most clearly from the 00:18:59.400 --> 00:19:03.480 whole saga. November 6, 2013. The day Google 00:19:03.480 --> 00:19:06.299 decides that, from now on, to comment on a YouTube 00:19:06.299 --> 00:19:09.859 video, you must have a Google Plus account. Why? 00:19:10.059 --> 00:19:12.039 I mean, why would you force that? YouTube was 00:19:12.039 --> 00:19:13.980 doing just fine on its own. Well, the rationale 00:19:13.980 --> 00:19:16.200 was actually somewhat noble, if you kind of squint 00:19:16.200 --> 00:19:18.299 at it. They wanted to clean up the cesspool of 00:19:18.299 --> 00:19:20.240 YouTube comments. I mean, that's a fair point. 00:19:20.420 --> 00:19:23.339 YouTube comments are legendary for being just 00:19:23.339 --> 00:19:27.230 awful. And the logic was... If we force people 00:19:27.230 --> 00:19:30.089 to use their real identities via Google +, the 00:19:30.089 --> 00:19:32.650 trolling will stop. You know, people behave better 00:19:32.650 --> 00:19:34.430 when their real name is attached to their words. 00:19:34.650 --> 00:19:37.309 Okay, that makes sense. Did it work? It backfired 00:19:37.309 --> 00:19:39.589 so spectacularly. It was a full -scale revolt. 00:19:39.950 --> 00:19:43.589 The YouTube community, which just prizes anonymity 00:19:43.589 --> 00:19:46.329 and freedom of expression, absolutely hated it. 00:19:46.450 --> 00:19:49.339 And this is where Bob comes in. Yes. the ASCII 00:19:49.339 --> 00:19:51.660 art army. You have to explain this for people 00:19:51.660 --> 00:19:54.160 who maybe weren't spending their life in comment 00:19:54.160 --> 00:19:58.019 sections back in 2013. So users started spamming 00:19:58.019 --> 00:20:00.799 the comment sections with ASCII art pictures 00:20:00.799 --> 00:20:02.759 that are made out of text characters. Right. 00:20:02.880 --> 00:20:05.960 And specifically, they were images of tanks and 00:20:05.960 --> 00:20:08.500 little stick figures. And the stick figure was 00:20:08.500 --> 00:20:11.119 always named Bob. A stick figure army. And the 00:20:11.119 --> 00:20:13.140 text would usually say something like, this is 00:20:13.140 --> 00:20:15.759 Bob. Bob is building an army to fight against 00:20:15.759 --> 00:20:19.200 Google Plus. It was this massive coordinated 00:20:19.200 --> 00:20:22.319 protest. The comment sections became completely 00:20:22.319 --> 00:20:24.460 unusable. So instead of cleaning up the spam, 00:20:24.700 --> 00:20:28.099 the integration just increased it exponentially. 00:20:28.380 --> 00:20:30.400 It was basically a denial of service attack carried 00:20:30.400 --> 00:20:32.539 out by the users against their own platform. 00:20:32.660 --> 00:20:34.460 And it wasn't just the trolls, was it? Even the 00:20:34.460 --> 00:20:37.819 founders of YouTube were mad. Oh, yeah. Jad Karim, 00:20:37.960 --> 00:20:40.599 one of the co -founders, he hadn't posted on 00:20:40.599 --> 00:20:43.750 his own channel in years. He came back to the 00:20:43.750 --> 00:20:46.829 very first video ever uploaded to YouTube, me 00:20:46.829 --> 00:20:49.369 at the zoo, and he posted a comment. What did 00:20:49.369 --> 00:20:52.210 he say? He said, why the fangpay do I need a 00:20:52.210 --> 00:20:55.549 Google Plus account to comment on a video? Wow. 00:20:56.200 --> 00:20:59.039 When the literal founder of the platform is dropping 00:20:59.039 --> 00:21:01.779 F -bombs on your new feature, you know you've 00:21:01.779 --> 00:21:03.680 messed up. It just highlighted the fundamental 00:21:03.680 --> 00:21:07.359 problem. Google was prioritizing its own business 00:21:07.359 --> 00:21:11.180 goal, which was growing Google Plus over the 00:21:11.180 --> 00:21:13.839 user experience of its other much more successful 00:21:13.839 --> 00:21:16.380 products. They were willing to actively degrade 00:21:16.380 --> 00:21:18.880 YouTube just to prop up Google Plus traffic. 00:21:18.940 --> 00:21:20.460 Exactly. And they were doing the same thing with 00:21:20.460 --> 00:21:23.279 search, too. Right. Search plus your world. Sounds 00:21:23.279 --> 00:21:25.319 like a cheesy marketing slogan, doesn't it? It 00:21:25.319 --> 00:21:27.539 really does. So what was it? It was a feature 00:21:27.539 --> 00:21:29.940 where they started inserting Google Plus content 00:21:29.940 --> 00:21:32.420 and profiles directly into the general Google 00:21:32.420 --> 00:21:34.720 web search results. So if I search for something 00:21:34.720 --> 00:21:38.240 like pizza, I might see my friend's Google Plus 00:21:38.240 --> 00:21:41.519 post about pizza. Exactly. And more importantly, 00:21:41.640 --> 00:21:44.700 if you searched for a person's name, their Google 00:21:44.700 --> 00:21:46.839 Plus profile would show up prominently on the 00:21:46.839 --> 00:21:49.579 right -hand side, often above their Twitter or 00:21:49.579 --> 00:21:53.470 their Facebook or their LinkedIn profile. That 00:21:53.470 --> 00:21:56.230 feels a little unfair. Well, the criticism was 00:21:56.230 --> 00:21:58.930 that it was blatantly anti -competitive. They 00:21:58.930 --> 00:22:01.450 were favoring their own social network over more 00:22:01.450 --> 00:22:04.849 relevant results from Twitter or Flick or Facebook. 00:22:05.049 --> 00:22:07.150 It started to attract the attention of antitrust 00:22:07.150 --> 00:22:08.910 regulators. It did. It looked like they were 00:22:08.910 --> 00:22:11.569 using their monopoly in search to bully their 00:22:11.569 --> 00:22:14.170 way into the social market. The classic putting 00:22:14.170 --> 00:22:16.170 your thumb on the scale. And there's one more 00:22:16.170 --> 00:22:18.309 controversy that's just a bizarre little anecdote. 00:22:18.829 --> 00:22:22.559 The Obama campaign spam. This one is so strange. 00:22:22.859 --> 00:22:25.740 I haven't heard this one. So in 2012, for reasons 00:22:25.740 --> 00:22:28.240 that are still kind of mysterious, the restrictions 00:22:28.240 --> 00:22:31.220 on Google Plus in China were suddenly relaxed. 00:22:31.759 --> 00:22:34.400 Just for a moment. Which is weird because usually 00:22:34.400 --> 00:22:37.000 the Great Firewall blocks most Google services. 00:22:37.259 --> 00:22:39.900 Exactly. And so Chinese users realized they could 00:22:39.900 --> 00:22:42.240 suddenly access it. And they all flooded Barack 00:22:42.240 --> 00:22:45.519 Obama's official Google Plus campaign page. With 00:22:45.519 --> 00:22:49.400 what? Messages of support? With everything. Jokes, 00:22:49.400 --> 00:22:52.059 off -topic comments, calls for political liberation, 00:22:52.380 --> 00:22:54.740 just random memes. They effectively occupied 00:22:54.740 --> 00:22:58.559 the page. It was this sudden, chaotic influx 00:22:58.559 --> 00:23:00.539 of users from a region where the service was 00:23:00.539 --> 00:23:02.559 normally blocked. It just showed how unpredictable 00:23:02.559 --> 00:23:04.819 and unstable these platforms can be when the 00:23:04.819 --> 00:23:07.319 floodgates suddenly open. So we have the ghost 00:23:07.319 --> 00:23:09.319 town metrics. We have the angry YouTubers, the 00:23:09.319 --> 00:23:12.200 pseudonym wars, the antitrust concerns. It really 00:23:12.200 --> 00:23:13.759 feels like the writing is on the wall at this 00:23:13.759 --> 00:23:17.380 point. When did the pivot finally happen? When 00:23:17.380 --> 00:23:20.140 did they basically admit defeat? It all started 00:23:20.140 --> 00:23:23.359 around 2014. The first big domino to fall was 00:23:23.359 --> 00:23:26.119 Vic Gundotra. The father of Google Plus plan. 00:23:26.339 --> 00:23:28.640 The man whose vision this entire project was. 00:23:28.779 --> 00:23:31.539 He departs the company in April of 2014. And 00:23:31.539 --> 00:23:33.480 when the captain leaves the ship? The ship is 00:23:33.480 --> 00:23:35.680 usually in trouble. So the leadership shuffles 00:23:35.680 --> 00:23:38.269 a bit. David Besbrys takes over for a short time 00:23:38.269 --> 00:23:42.029 and then Bradley Horowitz steps in by 2015. And 00:23:42.029 --> 00:23:45.009 Horowitz is the one who announces a huge shift. 00:23:45.309 --> 00:23:48.029 This is the great unbundling. Correct. Google 00:23:48.029 --> 00:23:50.950 finally realized that the social layer strategy, 00:23:51.210 --> 00:23:53.910 the idea of forcing everything to be Google plus 00:23:53.910 --> 00:23:57.190 Ed, was failing. In fact, it was actively hurting 00:23:57.190 --> 00:23:59.690 their other products. So they decided to break 00:23:59.690 --> 00:24:01.900 it apart. They decided to take... The good parts, 00:24:02.019 --> 00:24:03.839 the parts people actually liked, and let them 00:24:03.839 --> 00:24:06.619 live on their own. Right. So in May 2015, at 00:24:06.619 --> 00:24:09.359 their big Google I .O. conference, they announced 00:24:09.359 --> 00:24:12.380 Google Photos as a completely standalone product. 00:24:12.759 --> 00:24:15.579 Which was a massive, massive success. Huge. It's 00:24:15.579 --> 00:24:17.519 still one of their best and most beloved products 00:24:17.519 --> 00:24:20.460 today. They realized people wanted the unlimited 00:24:20.460 --> 00:24:23.319 photo storage and the cool A .I. editing tools, 00:24:23.539 --> 00:24:26.519 but they did not want the social network that 00:24:26.519 --> 00:24:28.740 was attached to it. And Hangouts also moved to 00:24:28.740 --> 00:24:31.079 be a standalone service. It did. So what happened 00:24:31.079 --> 00:24:33.160 to the actual social network part, you know, 00:24:33.180 --> 00:24:35.619 the stream? It was refocused. They did a big 00:24:35.619 --> 00:24:38.519 redesign in November of 2015, and they shifted 00:24:38.519 --> 00:24:41.299 the focus entirely to communities and collections. 00:24:41.640 --> 00:24:43.579 Collections sounds a bit like Pinterest. It was 00:24:43.579 --> 00:24:46.079 very much a Pinterest -style curation feature, 00:24:46.240 --> 00:24:49.359 and communities were just topic -based groups. 00:24:49.500 --> 00:24:51.619 They tried to pivot from connect with everyone 00:24:51.619 --> 00:24:54.039 you know, which, you know. Facebook had clearly 00:24:54.039 --> 00:24:56.460 won to connect with people who like the same 00:24:56.460 --> 00:24:58.319 weird stuff that you do. Which is actually a 00:24:58.319 --> 00:25:00.279 totally valid strategy. It's what Reddit is. 00:25:00.359 --> 00:25:03.240 It's what Discord is. It is. And to be fair to 00:25:03.240 --> 00:25:05.940 the Google Plus team, for a while there was this 00:25:05.940 --> 00:25:09.559 dedicated core user base that really loved this 00:25:09.559 --> 00:25:12.099 new version. You know, photographers, Linux enthusiasts, 00:25:12.539 --> 00:25:16.309 tabletop gamers. It became a much... quieter, 00:25:16.349 --> 00:25:18.809 more interest based network. But I'm guessing 00:25:18.809 --> 00:25:20.849 quieter doesn't really pay the bills at Google 00:25:20.849 --> 00:25:23.190 scale. No. And it definitely doesn't justify 00:25:23.190 --> 00:25:25.569 the massive infrastructure cost of running the 00:25:25.569 --> 00:25:28.309 thing. But what ultimately killed it, it wasn't 00:25:28.309 --> 00:25:31.049 the lack of users. It was the liability. Security 00:25:31.049 --> 00:25:33.769 failures. OK, this is the final demise. Project 00:25:33.769 --> 00:25:36.210 Strobe. That sounds like a techno thriller movie. 00:25:36.410 --> 00:25:39.309 The Strobe Protocol. It really does. So Project 00:25:39.309 --> 00:25:41.950 Strobe was a big internal review of all developer 00:25:41.950 --> 00:25:45.150 access to Google accounts. This was 2018. And 00:25:45.150 --> 00:25:48.329 privacy was suddenly a huge topic. Right. GDPR 00:25:48.329 --> 00:25:50.849 was coming in Europe. Cambridge Analytica just 00:25:50.849 --> 00:25:53.680 happened with Facebook. So Google is, you know, 00:25:53.680 --> 00:25:56.000 checking its own house for leaks. And they found 00:25:56.000 --> 00:25:58.859 one. They found a big one. In the spring of 2018, 00:25:59.220 --> 00:26:02.259 they discovered a bug in the Google Plus API. 00:26:02.660 --> 00:26:05.079 And the API is what lets other apps talk to Google 00:26:05.079 --> 00:26:07.839 Plus way, right? Exactly. Like, if you play a 00:26:07.839 --> 00:26:10.160 mobile game and it says, log in with Google Plus 00:26:10.160 --> 00:26:13.019 to save your high score, that game is using the 00:26:13.019 --> 00:26:16.400 API. And the bug allowed these third -party apps 00:26:16.400 --> 00:26:20.140 to access non -public profile fields. Like what 00:26:20.140 --> 00:26:22.759 kind of fields? Things like your name, email 00:26:22.759 --> 00:26:26.819 address, occupation, gender, age. Even if the 00:26:26.819 --> 00:26:29.339 user had specifically set those fields to be 00:26:29.339 --> 00:26:32.180 private in their settings. Oof. That is a huge 00:26:32.180 --> 00:26:34.099 breach of trust. How many people were affected? 00:26:34.519 --> 00:26:36.619 Potentially hundreds of thousands. The estimate 00:26:36.619 --> 00:26:40.420 was up to 500 ,000 accounts. But the real scandal 00:26:40.420 --> 00:26:42.940 wasn't just the bug. I mean, software has bugs. 00:26:43.119 --> 00:26:45.720 The scandal was Google's reaction to it. The 00:26:45.720 --> 00:26:48.079 cover up. Right. The Wall Street Journal broke 00:26:48.079 --> 00:26:50.660 the story that Google chose not to disclose the 00:26:50.660 --> 00:26:53.000 breach immediately. They found it. They patched 00:26:53.000 --> 00:26:55.339 it. But they didn't tell anyone. Fear of regulatory 00:26:55.339 --> 00:26:58.440 scrutiny. an internal memo leaked and it basically 00:26:58.440 --> 00:27:00.619 said that disclosing it would draw immediate 00:27:00.619 --> 00:27:02.880 comparisons to facebook's cambridge analytica 00:27:02.880 --> 00:27:05.700 scandal and it would invite this huge unwanted 00:27:05.700 --> 00:27:08.259 spotlight from regulators so they just stayed 00:27:08.259 --> 00:27:11.799 quiet that is not a good look no it looks incredibly 00:27:11.799 --> 00:27:14.299 guilty and then as if the universe has a very 00:27:14.299 --> 00:27:18.140 dark sense of irony in december of 2018 they 00:27:18.140 --> 00:27:21.299 found a second bug You are kidding me. A software 00:27:21.299 --> 00:27:24.160 update introduced another API bug, and this one 00:27:24.160 --> 00:27:28.200 affected 52 .5 million users. 52 million. That 00:27:28.200 --> 00:27:31.779 is a massive jump from 500 ,000. For six days, 00:27:32.099 --> 00:27:34.480 app developers could access private data that 00:27:34.480 --> 00:27:35.880 they shouldn't have been able to see. Okay, that 00:27:35.880 --> 00:27:38.519 has to be the final nail. It was. Google announced 00:27:38.519 --> 00:27:40.789 the shutdown almost immediately. Originally, 00:27:40.789 --> 00:27:43.029 they had planned for a slow sunset ending in 00:27:43.029 --> 00:27:45.609 August 2019, but after that second breach, they 00:27:45.609 --> 00:27:48.569 moved the date up to April 2, 2019. They just 00:27:48.569 --> 00:27:50.690 wanted it gone. It had become a toxic asset. 00:27:50.950 --> 00:27:53.529 They officially cited low usage, and they shared 00:27:53.529 --> 00:27:56.950 that stat that 90 % of user sessions lasted less 00:27:56.950 --> 00:27:59.569 than five seconds and the extreme difficulty 00:27:59.569 --> 00:28:02.730 of maintaining the product securely. They basically 00:28:02.730 --> 00:28:05.230 said, look. Nobody is using this, and it's creating 00:28:05.230 --> 00:28:07.630 a massive security hole for us. We're out. So 00:28:07.630 --> 00:28:10.470 was there a lawsuit? Because 52 million people 00:28:10.470 --> 00:28:14.130 having their data exposed usually leads to a 00:28:14.130 --> 00:28:16.529 few lawyers getting involved. There was indeed 00:28:16.529 --> 00:28:18.890 a class action lawsuit. It eventually settled 00:28:18.890 --> 00:28:22.670 for $7 .5 million. $7 .5 million. For a company 00:28:22.670 --> 00:28:24.950 the size of Google, that sounds low. It's pocket 00:28:24.950 --> 00:28:27.849 change. And when you divide that amount by the 00:28:27.849 --> 00:28:29.869 number of people who actually filed a claim. 00:28:30.190 --> 00:28:32.029 How much did people get? If you filed a claim 00:28:32.029 --> 00:28:33.829 and it was approved, you received a payment of 00:28:33.829 --> 00:28:37.609 about $2 .15. $2 .15. Yes. That's the official 00:28:37.609 --> 00:28:40.170 value of our Google Plus privacy, I guess. It's 00:28:40.170 --> 00:28:42.549 symbolic at best. It'll buy you a very, very 00:28:42.549 --> 00:28:45.750 small coffee. So April 2019, it's all shut down. 00:28:45.869 --> 00:28:47.509 The consumer version is wiped from existence. 00:28:47.970 --> 00:28:50.250 Users were told to download their data using 00:28:50.250 --> 00:28:52.630 Google Takeout. Which is a whole project in itself. 00:28:52.710 --> 00:28:54.970 If you've ever used Takeout, you know you just 00:28:54.970 --> 00:28:57.089 get these giant zip files full of inscrutable 00:28:57.089 --> 00:29:00.529 JSON data. It's not exactly user -friendly. Yeah. 00:29:00.839 --> 00:29:03.799 But the tech didn't completely disappear, did 00:29:03.799 --> 00:29:07.079 it? We mentioned photos. Photos is the big survivor. 00:29:07.339 --> 00:29:09.400 It took the best of the image algorithms and 00:29:09.400 --> 00:29:11.559 just became a staple product for them. What about 00:29:11.559 --> 00:29:14.180 on the business side of things? Right. So Google 00:29:14.180 --> 00:29:17.099 Plus for G Suite, the enterprise version, it 00:29:17.099 --> 00:29:19.440 didn't die immediately. It was rebranded as Google 00:29:19.440 --> 00:29:22.240 Currents. Currents. I feel like I've heard that 00:29:22.240 --> 00:29:24.039 name from Google before. They love recycling 00:29:24.039 --> 00:29:26.519 names. Yeah. There was an old app called Currents 00:29:26.519 --> 00:29:28.920 that was a newsreader. But this new Currents 00:29:28.920 --> 00:29:30.819 was meant for internal business communication, 00:29:31.220 --> 00:29:33.440 sort of like a corporate Facebook. And did that 00:29:33.440 --> 00:29:36.299 last? Nope. It was eventually shut down and folded 00:29:36.299 --> 00:29:39.700 into Google Chat in 2023. They merged it into 00:29:39.700 --> 00:29:42.460 the Spaces feature. And there was one more attempt, 00:29:42.680 --> 00:29:45.640 right, after it all died. Something called Shoelace. 00:29:45.880 --> 00:29:49.740 Ah, Shoelace, yes. It launched in July 2019, 00:29:50.019 --> 00:29:52.440 just a few months after Google Plus was buried. 00:29:52.640 --> 00:29:55.740 It was a very experimental app from Area 120, 00:29:56.160 --> 00:29:58.940 which is Google's internal incubator. And what 00:29:58.940 --> 00:30:01.119 was the idea behind that? It was all about organizing 00:30:01.119 --> 00:30:03.779 local events and activities. The idea was to 00:30:03.880 --> 00:30:06.779 tie people together like shoelaces you it was 00:30:06.779 --> 00:30:09.420 strictly mobile strictly local it was really 00:30:09.420 --> 00:30:13.039 trying to be the anti Facebook small groups focused 00:30:13.039 --> 00:30:16.640 on real -world interaction let me guess it didn't 00:30:16.640 --> 00:30:19.480 work well just look at the timeline It launched 00:30:19.480 --> 00:30:22.559 in mid -2019. It was an app designed to get people 00:30:22.559 --> 00:30:25.339 to meet up in person. And then 2020 happened. 00:30:25.500 --> 00:30:28.839 By May 2020, the pandemic is raging. It's kind 00:30:28.839 --> 00:30:30.859 of hard to launch an app about meeting strangers 00:30:30.859 --> 00:30:33.779 in person when the entire world goes into lockdown. 00:30:33.940 --> 00:30:36.740 That is just spectacularly bad luck. It really 00:30:36.740 --> 00:30:39.140 is. So, yeah, it was shut down. Okay, so let's 00:30:39.140 --> 00:30:42.000 wrap this all up. We have gone from Facebook 00:30:42.000 --> 00:30:47.180 killer to ghost town to security risk. What is 00:30:47.180 --> 00:30:49.720 the ultimate legacy here? What's the big takeaway? 00:30:49.980 --> 00:30:52.759 I think the biggest lesson is the absolute failure 00:30:52.759 --> 00:30:55.420 of forcing social. You just can't make people 00:30:55.420 --> 00:30:57.500 be friends. You can't. You can build the features. 00:30:57.880 --> 00:31:00.680 Circles were smart. Photos are beautiful. Hangouts 00:31:00.680 --> 00:31:03.900 were genuinely useful. But you cannot mandate 00:31:03.900 --> 00:31:05.980 the social connection itself. It's like they 00:31:05.980 --> 00:31:08.240 treated their users like inventory. We have these 00:31:08.240 --> 00:31:09.960 millions of people. Let's just move them over 00:31:09.960 --> 00:31:12.279 to this new product. Exactly. And people resent 00:31:12.279 --> 00:31:15.039 that. Social networks are these delicate, organic 00:31:15.039 --> 00:31:17.920 ecosystems. They have to grow from genuine desire, 00:31:18.200 --> 00:31:21.039 not from corporate obligation. And looking back 00:31:21.039 --> 00:31:24.240 on it all now, Google Plus might have been right 00:31:24.240 --> 00:31:27.380 about one thing. Oh, yeah. What's that? The circles. 00:31:27.700 --> 00:31:30.750 Hmm. How so? Well, look at how we actually use 00:31:30.750 --> 00:31:33.250 social media today. People are posting less and 00:31:33.250 --> 00:31:35.029 less on their public feeds, like on Facebook 00:31:35.029 --> 00:31:38.769 or X. Where is the real conversation happening 00:31:38.769 --> 00:31:41.029 now? It's in group chats. It's in Discord servers, 00:31:41.250 --> 00:31:44.309 Slack communities, close friends, stories on 00:31:44.309 --> 00:31:47.470 Instagram, WhatsApp groups. Exactly. We are using 00:31:47.470 --> 00:31:50.180 circles. We're just not doing it under one single 00:31:50.180 --> 00:31:52.880 corporate roof. We want those small, specific, 00:31:53.000 --> 00:31:55.880 context -aware groups. We want to share the dumb 00:31:55.880 --> 00:31:58.279 meme with our friends and the baby photo with 00:31:58.279 --> 00:32:00.700 our grandma and never have the two meet. That 00:32:00.700 --> 00:32:03.019 is a fascinating point. Google Plus actually 00:32:03.019 --> 00:32:05.119 predicted the future fragmentation of social 00:32:05.119 --> 00:32:08.319 media, that desire for privacy and context. But 00:32:08.319 --> 00:32:10.599 they tried to execute it in a way that just felt 00:32:10.599 --> 00:32:12.779 unnatural and corporate. They built the right 00:32:12.779 --> 00:32:15.000 house, but they put it in a neighborhood nobody 00:32:15.000 --> 00:32:16.799 actually wanted to live in. And then they locked 00:32:16.799 --> 00:32:18.599 the doors and told everyone they had to stay. 00:32:18.740 --> 00:32:20.700 Not the best strategy for building a community. 00:32:21.000 --> 00:32:24.680 Not at all. So here's a final provocative thought 00:32:24.680 --> 00:32:28.759 for you to chew on. Google Plus failed because 00:32:28.759 --> 00:32:32.339 it tried to be this layer on top of everything. 00:32:32.640 --> 00:32:34.900 It wanted to be the single identity passport 00:32:34.900 --> 00:32:38.839 for the entire Internet. Right. But today, what 00:32:38.839 --> 00:32:41.720 do we use to log into everything? We use sign 00:32:41.720 --> 00:32:43.960 in with Google. We use Google Photos to back 00:32:43.960 --> 00:32:46.619 up our memories. Right. We use YouTube. We use 00:32:46.619 --> 00:32:49.680 Gmail. We do. All of those things. So in a weird 00:32:49.680 --> 00:32:52.440 way, did they actually win? The social network 00:32:52.440 --> 00:32:55.980 died, but that identity layer is stronger than 00:32:55.980 --> 00:32:58.329 it has ever been. Did they end up getting what 00:32:58.329 --> 00:33:00.809 they really wanted, the data, the tracking, the 00:33:00.809 --> 00:33:03.990 identity graph, just without the constant headache 00:33:03.990 --> 00:33:06.369 of having to run a news feed? That is a very 00:33:06.369 --> 00:33:08.470 provocative question. They lost the battle for 00:33:08.470 --> 00:33:10.410 your attention, but maybe they won the war for 00:33:10.410 --> 00:33:12.130 your identity. Something to think about the next 00:33:12.130 --> 00:33:13.809 time you click that sign in with Google button. 00:33:14.170 --> 00:33:16.089 Thanks for listening to this deep dive. Until 00:33:16.089 --> 00:33:16.529 next time.