Google+ Isn't Dead, It's Resting. We Swear.

Send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for Google+:

Nothing says you’ve fallen out of favor quite like being banished from the most exclusive and uncluttered piece of real estate on the Internet: the Google search homepage. 

It’s been known for some time that Google is at the very least deemphasizing Google+, but perhaps nothing the company has said to date more emphatically confirms this than the recent disappearance of a direct link from Google’s homepage to its long-struggling social media platform, a platform Google originally touted as central to its future.

For its part, Google is still carrying on with the ruse that Google+ is a must-have addition to your online social life. How they can make these kind of announcements with a straight face is beyond me:
"Google Plus is not dead," Bradley Horowitz, who now leads the ersatz social network, told Steven Levy last week ahead of the Google I/O developer conference. "In fact, it's got more signs of life than it's had in some time."

You may recall that the last time you wanted your customers to see something, you took it off your website's home page. Google's announcements on this are very Monty Python:

I don't like to sound happy about Google+'s long fall from grace, but I've spent too many years reading articles and LinkedIn posts telling me how incredibly important Google+ will be any minute now. My reply: "Call me when it starts to matter." And those astronomical user numbers? "Call me when they're activeusers."

I've been calling Google+ Buzz 2 since, well, since Google+ came on the scene. Buzz was Google's previous attempt at breaking into the social media world and it crashed and burned. Then came Google+. I had a colleague who signed off Facebook and Twitter in order to camp in Google+'s brave new world. A year later he was back, unashamedly admitting that Google+ was a lonely place: "No one is there."

For years, Google+ has been a tool that exists almost exclusively for search engine and social media consultants. A new and/or obscure social media platform is a great way for a consultant to squeeze a few extra dollars out of somebody. Be careful whenever you hear someone say you must be using some platform or other. Ask 10 friends if they're using it and see what they say first.

Google's frustration with getting people to use a second Facebook will continue. Let's see what happens next.