For many users, Google+ accounts do not get all that many visits. Now, Google Inc seems to be indicating that it, too, will be paying less attention to its social network.
On Monday, Google said it would move features once integrated into Google+ out of the social network and into other Google services. Photo features have already been moved to the newly introduced Google Photos. Location-sharing is to go to Google Hangouts, the company’s chat app.
Users will also no longer need a Google+ account to comment on YouTube, long a point of contention among users, who felt as if they were being roped into a social network they did not ask for.
Altogether, the moves, announced in a blog post on Monday, are a moment of reckoning for Google+ and those who created it.
“While we got certain things right, we made a few choices that, in hindsight, we’ve needed to rethink,” Bradley Horowitz, who oversees Google+, wrote about the moves.
He was even more contrite on his personal Google+ page.
“We want to formally retire the notion that a Google+ membership is required for anything at Google,” he said.
Google said it would make it easier for users to delete Google+ accounts, if they choose to.
Started in 2011 and promoted as Google’s answer to Facebook, Google+ initially appeared popular on paper.
The social network reached 300 million monthly active users in just two years, according to the company.
However, much of that growth, analysts said, came because users needed to create Google+ accounts to use some of the company’s other services, like YouTube, annoying many long-time users of those services.
Google’s decision to dismantle Google+ might have less to do with appeasing users’ anger than with meeting the demand of mobile-phone owners, who expect apps for individual services.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained