It was more than just "if we build our version of Facebook." It was, "if we kill off every other social like thing we have and force people into circles, we can build our own Facebook." Google Buzz, in particular, was a fairly well done integration with Google Reader and Google Mail. I legit had discussions about articles with close friends because of it. But, alas, no. Had to die because their social was supposed to be Plus.

I'm trying to remember all of the crap integrations with the likes of Youtube that were pushed. Just, screw that stuff. And quit trying to make yet another new messenger app!

I don't see Google Plus as hubris. I just think they saw a threat in Facebook and felt they had to try and build a competing product (and happened to have the time/money to invest).

Doing nothing while a competitor gains steam would've been hubris.

My read on the whole Google Plus thing was that they drastically underestimated the difficulty of convincing people to actually use it. They clearly had the expertise to build it, and they had some interesting ideas with their circles of friends or whatever they called them (though I think they missed the mark on how they used them). But they couldn’t convince anyone to actually use it.

Maybe I’m wrong and internally they knew they had a major uphill battle, but I don’t think so. So many of the choices they made were needlessly user hostile (e.g. real name requirements) that it seems like they assumed it would be a given that people would want to use it. When they later realized their error they tried to cram it down everyone’s throats with stuff like YouTube comments only working from Google Plus accounts.

> Maybe I’m wrong and internally they knew they had a major uphill battle, but I don’t think so.

I think you're wrong with probably the same confidence you think you're not wrong. :)

At most, I'd say they didn't expect it to be as hard as it proved to be.

I totally agree that Google just didn't get it right, but all the things you describe, to me, fall under a mix of "they had to try", and "it was working for Facebook" (but also having to differentiate from Facebook at the same time, eg with circles).

(Disclaimer, I guess) I was working for Facebook when the whole Google Plus thing happened, and Facebook definitely saw it as a serious threat. I don't at all recall Facebook folks laughing it off as Google hubris, more like it was a long shot, but Google wasn't to be ignored.

Upvote for you regardless, because I think it's a solid take and an engaging comment.

I think I could pretty easily have been persuaded by Google Plus. At that time I had broadly positive sentiments towards Google. Two things put me off.

Firstly, that whole account-unification thing where YouTube accounts were getting merged with Google[+] logins. That rubbed me the wrong way.

Then the Google+ promotional stuff all talked about how you could use "Circles" to silo posts to different "circles" of friends. It sounded very complicated and I was worried that I'd publish something snarky to the wrong group of friends :)

I wonder how many others had the same concern? Given that Steve Yegge accidentally published one of his rants to the public that was meant purely for internal Google consumption (I think that was on G+ ...?) that might have been a legit thing to be wary of.

There was also the very minor annoyance of G+ taking over the + operator in Google search (previously you could say +keyword instead of "keyword" to force literal search), but I don't think that would have swayed me against joining.

All that is true, but the primary problem with Google Plus was the network effect. Whenever I logged into Google plus, most of the content from friends was basically “cool, so this is Google plus” and nothing else, because everything at the time was on Facebook. Later Google started filling my feed with stuff from strangers because there was no organic content from people I actually cared about.

If you can’t solve the chicken and egg problem of engagement then nothing else really matters.

I'd probably have signed up if it were not for those two issues. Step zero in breaking the network effect is not to piss off those who might join despite it.