Google Officially Splits Google+ Into Photos And Streams
Google is officially splitting Google+ into photos and streams. In a post to announce the change, Bradley Horowitz, a long time Google VP of product, said he had become the new lead for the new products, according to The Verge. He now occupies the position left behind by David Besbris, whose reign only lasted less than a year.
“Just wanted to confirm that the rumors are true — I’m excited to be running Google’s Photos and Streams products! It’s important to me that these changes are properly understood to be positive improvements to both our products and how they reach users,” said Horowitz in a post on his Google+ page.
The change of name could significantly mean that the company is planning to ditch or make changes to the brand. However, Google is yet to make any official announcement to that effect, but Horowitz’s post sure holds a lot of water considering his position within the company.
In an interview granted to Forbes last week, Google’s senior vice president of products, Sundar Pichai had suggested that Google was planning to split Google+ into pieces. Pichai had told Forbes that the company would gradually focus on communications, photos and the Google+ Streams. “I think increasingly you’ll see us focus on communications, photos and the Google+ Stream as three important areas, rather than being thought of as one area.”
Now that it is all but confirmed that Photos and Streams have been separated by Google, it is not yet clear what the company intends to do with Google+ and Google Hangouts. While it is not clear at this time what Google plans to do with Google+, the company did say the company was looking at something much bigger that would help people to communicate wherever they are. Last December, Horowitz said of Hangouts: “We’re trying to do something broader that helps people communicate wherever they are using whatever products they prefer.”
While we await official announcement to that effect, it appears that the separation will allow Google distance its Hangouts communication from the social network and perhaps develop all three independent of one another.
The coming days will surely give us a clue as to how this would affect users of the Google+ platform, which has struggled against some other social media outfits.
Google launched Google+ in 2011as an invitation-only field test, but later suspended invite due to it’s the crazy rise in demands for new accounts.
