Lost, anyone? The plan was simple... Step one: Make new social media platform and force integration with beloved services. Step two: ??? Step three: Profit! Light up the torches because that's a recipe for an angry (albeit digital) mob. YouTubers rioting in the comments, spam running rampant, and... well, you know the rest. The issue wasn't how good Google+ was; we just didn't like it forced on us. Why didn't they back off right then? It's like a bad poker play: just go all-in. Oops!
Now they've looked back on their mistakes and are going to make it all right. This opens the door for some pretty amazing things in the future. What will they do with their newfound realizations. Let's take a look at each of Google's social tools individually!
Let's jump into the main streaming culprit of this whole thing: YouTube. You know they've got some tricks hidden up their sleeve. With the upcoming streaming powerhouse YouTube Gaming coming soon, there's no need to clutter up things with another source of comments. Now it can have a cleaner interface with the option to broadcast directly from Google+. It's a win-win for both services! This next GIF is dedicated to all the YouTubers who are still hurt about the Google+ comment integration:
Hangouts is by far my favorite chat client out there and it only stands to get better once it's completely separate from Google+. With only a Gmail address needed to be able to use Hangouts, more people will be willing to use it. Once iOS stops getting all the good updates, that is. ;-DSeriously though, add fun/simple/smooth video messaging to Hangouts and watch the downloads skyrocket. Attach that content to an option to automatically connect to Google Photos and have that accessible through G+ too. Those can be made available through another tab. Come on, Google; I hope you're not covering your ears saying "LALALALA!!!":
Google Photos is another great service that has now become stronger now that it can stand on it's own. Having the ability to share pictures and/or videos outside of Google makes this a no-brainer. Now it's up to Google work in backend connections so the other tools benefit from it. Sharing from Google Drive straight to your Google Photos would be a nice touch. Have direct access to your photo album(s) to attach to Google Calendar Invites too. For the cherry on top we can re-integrate it by allowing images in Google+ comments, that'd be great.
For all these reasons (and many more I'll probably think about in the shower tomorrow morning), I'm happy Google finally wised up and backed off on forcing Google+ on people. Now it can continue to evolve over separately from Google's other social tools.
What other positives do you think will come from Google+ becoming it's own service?