One year ago I posted this article; Losing faith in Google
I have been publishing content on Google+ for several years, but my trust in Google is diminishing. As a result, I have decided to distance myself from their social network platform, Google+.
The majority of the content I share on Google+ consists of a personal collection of random thoughts and links to articles that I find interesting. While it wouldn’t be a significant loss if Google+ were to shut down one day, I still prefer to disassociate myself from the company before that happens. I would hate to discover one day that I’m locked out of my account, similar to what recently happened to Jordan Peterson and journalists who were writing articles in Google Docs. Incidents like these, along with YouTube demonetization, have eroded my confidence in the company. I fear that one day a Google algorithm might delete all of my content without any warning.
Therefore, after many years, I find myself returning to a WordPress blog as my platform of choice.
https://thoughtmemory.wordpress.com/2017/11/07/first-blog-post/
Less than a year later, Google announced that they were killing off Google+ for rather dubious reasons.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/technology/google-plus-security-disclosure.html
Google said on Monday that it would shut down Google Plus, the company’s long-struggling answer to Facebook’s giant social network, after it discovered a security vulnerability that exposed the private data of up to 500,000 users.
Google did not tell its users about the security issue when it was found in March because it didn’t appear that anyone had gained access to user information, and the company’s “Privacy & Data Protection Office” decided it was not legally required to report it, the search giant said in a blog post.
The decision to stay quiet, which raised eyebrows in the cybersecurity community, comes against the backdrop of relatively new rules in California and Europe that govern when a company must disclose a security episode.
In fact, somehow I missed this article from 2011, where a Google engineer had already referred to Google+ as a “Pathetic Afterthought.“
Furthermore, Google has recently announced its decision to discontinue Google Hangouts, making it another casualty of Google’s tendency to rapidly shift its focus.
According to source familiar with the product’s internal roadmap, Google Hangouts for consumers will be shutting down sometime in 2020. That’s not surprising at all since Google essentially ceased development on the app more than a year ago. But just know, going into 2019, this is indeed your last year to keep using the beloved (?) legacy chat app.
https://9to5google.com/2018/12/01/google-hangouts-shutting-down/
I should have learned my lesson when Google closed down Google Reader. At that time, I made the switch to Feedly for managing my RSS subscriptions. I used to be a strong supporter of all things Google, but due to their involvement in politics, tendency to abandon products, and departure from their motto of “don’t be evil,” I have come to realize that the quality of what you receive is often aligned with what you invest. Consequently, I have been actively distancing myself from Google by transitioning to alternative services such as ProtonMail, MS Outlook, and MS Office 365.
I encourage others to consider doing the same.
Thought and Memory 
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