Eulogy

Farhad Manjoo: Google+ is Dead

It missed its chance to compete with Facebook

You can bet they’re reading this one in Silicon Valley. Slate’s venerable tech writer Farhad Manjoo says that Google+ has blown any chance it had at beating social networking behemoth Facebook. The problem? “There’s nothing to do on Google+, and every time someone figures out a possible use for it, Google turns out the lights.” Take for example the company’s early crackdown on companies creating their own pages, or its rule against users creating pseudonyms on the site. While Google eventually reversed these policies, Manjoo says it’s too late: it’s already killed early enthusiasm with too many rules. “And for that reason, it is surely doomed.”