Google+ has become Google's black hole: great product ideas are killed because of it.

Google+ has become the most valued product since Page took over Google. Although it claims to have 360 million users, Google+ remains a "useless Ashoka" in the US and global social networking market. However, what is worrying is that this product has become a black hole within Google. A large number of excellent products and great ideas have been killed due to conflicts with the development goals of Google+.

The US tech media pointed out that the launch of Google+ did not change the way netizens use Google. However, Google is letting Google+ take control of the fate of other products, including closing many products to pave the way for itself.

The Wall Street Journal reported on a recent case. As we all know, Google faces accusations from multiple countries regarding its collection of netizen privacy. In 2011, Page once asked engineers to develop a simplified privacy operation feature.

According to this feature, Google would unify the behavior of collecting netizen privacy across all its products. The new three modes are code-named "kitten," "cat," and "tiger," representing the minimum, intermediate, and maximum collection of netizens' online data (including conducting Google web searches or watching YouTube videos).

For netizens, this was a good idea that would greatly simplify the complex privacy setting process. However, its implementation faced resistance within Google, especially from the social network Google+. The Google+ department hoped that netizens would share their information and data as much as possible on the internet. If the "minimum" mode was used to limit the collection of netizen privacy, it would conflict with the development of Google+. Eventually, this idea was shelved due to Google+.

This idea was clearly not the only one sacrificed for Google+. As we all know, Google's RSS subscription tool, Google Reader, which had a large number of users, was shut down, causing an uproar among users. Google believed that RSS subscription tools were outdated, and social networks like Google+ were the best platforms for subscribing to and sharing news information. In fact, before closing Reader, Google first canceled its subscription-sharing and other social features.

Brian Shih, the former product manager of Reader, also pointed out incisively that shutting down this product was to make way for Google+.

Additionally, in May, Google's chat tool Chat was replaced by Hangouts, the video group chat inside Google+. Users can no longer see their friends' GChat status information. Industry insiders pointed out that the reason Google cancels products and features is to encourage more netizens to go to the "ghost town" of Google+.

In 2011, facing Facebook's rising prominence, Google developed the social network Google+. Google believed that social networks like Facebook were affecting the traffic of Google web search.

However, the gap between Google+ and Facebook is enormous. According to comScore statistics, in 2012, the average time users spent on Google+ per session was only 3.3 minutes. Some people believe that although Google's goal was to overthrow Facebook's monopoly in the social network, currently, even if users register but do not return, Google is happy to obtain the data submitted by users during registration.

For Google, Google+ has not met expectations, but at the same time, many products and ideas have "sacrificed" for it. US media questioned whether Google might be burying other great ideas while focusing on nurturing Google+.