UPDATE (February 4, 2019): Google Users Panic Over Google+ Deletion Emails: Here’s What’s Actually Happening

– – –

As I have long been urging, Google is finally sending out emails to Google+ account holders warning them of the impending user trust failure that is the Google+ shutdown. However — surprise! — the atrocious way that Google has worded the message is triggering mass confusion from users who don’t even consider themselves to have ever been G+ users, and are now concerned that other Google services such as Photos, Gmail, YouTube, etc. may be shutting down and associated data deleted (“Google Finally Speaks About the G+ Shutdown: Pretty Much Tells Users to Go to Hell” – https://lauren.vortex.com/2019/01/30/google-finally-speaks-about-the-g-shutdown-pretty-much-tells-users-to-go-to-hell).

The underlying problem is that many users have G+ accounts but don’t realize it, and apparently Google is sending essentially the same message to everyone who ever had a G+ account, active or not. Because Google has been aggressively urging the creation of G+ accounts (literally until a few days ago!) many users inadvertently or casually created them, and then forgot about them, sometimes years ago. Now they’re receiving confusing “shutdown” messages and are understandably going into a panic.

UPDATE (February 3, 2019): I’m now receiving reports of users (especially ones receiving the notification emails who don’t recall having G+ accounts) fearing that “all their Google data is going to be deleted” — and also reports of many users who are assuming that these alarming emails about data deletion are fakes, spam, phishing attempts, etc. I’m also receiving piles of messages containing angry variations on “What the hell was Google thinking when they wrote those emails?”

During the horrific period some years ago when Google was REQUIRING the creation of G+ accounts to comment on YouTube (a disaster that I rallied against both outside and inside the company at the time) vast numbers of comments and accounts became tightly intertwined between YouTube and G+, and the ultimate removal of that linkage requirement left enormous numbers of G+ accounts that had really only been created by users for YouTube commenting during that period.

So this new flood of confused and concerned users was completely predictable. If I had written the Google+ shutdown emails, I would have clearly covered these issues to help avoid upsetting Google users unnecessarily. But of course Google didn’t ask me to write the emails, so they followed their usual utilitarian approach toward users that they’re in the process of shedding — yet another user trust failure.

But this particular failure was completely preventable.

Be seeing you.

–Lauren–