Google internal summary of the reasons for Google+'s failure: mobile layout was too slow

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Google announced on Monday that users will no longer need a Google+ account to log in to YouTube or other Google services. In the future, users will only need a Google account to use these applications and services, and no longer need a Google+ account.

Google has made a number of changes to Google+ over the past few months. In March, Google announced plans to restructure its Google+ strategy by splitting the service into two separate parts: News Feed and Photos.

In some ways, this is a sign that Google no longer sees Google+ as a social network competing with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. This is not surprising. Google+ has never attracted mainstream user adoption the way Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have.

Technically, there are indeed a large number of users using Google+, because users previously needed to use their Google+ accounts to log in to Gmail, Google Drive, and other Google applications. However, these users did not actively use the social networking function of Google+.

Market researcher Edward Morbis tracked the number of active users of Google+, defined as those who posted something to Google+ in January 2015, and concluded that Google+ had only 4 million to 6 million active users.

In April this year, Business Insider interviewed some Google insiders to try to understand what happened to Google+. Google originally planned to change the way people share their lives on the Internet with Google+. For Larry Page, Google+ is also very important. A source said that Page personally participated in Google+ and wanted to gather the strength of the entire company to support Google+.

One former employee said Google+'s main problem was that it was too similar to Facebook in its development. Another former employee agreed, saying Google was late to the market and its starting point was to compete with Facebook.

Google even showed a kind of "paranoia". Sources said that Facebook once actively poached people from Google, while Google+ employees were isolated. Google's move may be to prevent the spread of news about this product. Google+ employees also have their own secret cafeteria, which is called "Cloud", and employees from other departments are not allowed to enter this cafeteria.

"There was an atmosphere of fear here," the source said.

However, another former Google employee said that this secret cafeteria is just part of normal security measures. There are many places in Google's campus that are only open to employees of certain departments.

Here are some other tips from former Google employees:

- Google+ was designed to solve Google's own problems, not to build a product that helps users connect more easily. Google doesn't want to manage a large number of user accounts for different applications and services. Signing in to Google+ helps users use all Google products, which will help. However, Google+ does not provide a simple social experience like Facebook and LinkedIn, where users need to think about what kind of people they want to add to their circles. On Facebook and LinkedIn, users can just add friends.

- One person said Google+ wasn't growing fast enough on mobile. Facebook, which now makes most of its revenue from mobile and its apps, was aware of this problem. Google+, by contrast, focuses on high-resolution photos, which is suitable for desktop experiences and Chromebooks, but not for mobile devices.

- The person also said that Google+ is a "controversial" product within Google. However, this is not uncommon for a large company like Google. Different people have different views on the same thing.

- Vic Gundotra, who led the development of Google+ and played a key role in its development, left the company a year ago, surprising many. Another former Google employee said Google has not found a replacement for Gundotra.

Although Google+ has not developed into a successful social network, it does not mean that Google+ has failed. Google+ has laid the foundation for a seamless login system for all Google applications. This also fostered Google's new Photos application.

However, Google+ never became a mainstream social network and failed to catch up with social networking giants such as Facebook and Twitter.