New Delhi: Google is no longer asking users to sign-up for a Google+ account in order to use any of its other services. The move marks a complete revamp in the company's social strategy, following the departure of Vivek Gundotra, chief of Google+. The search engine had been mandating this Google+ account creation for the better part of 2.5 years or so—since January 2012.
Now when users go to create an account in Google service such as Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube etc, they will still be prompted to sign-up for a Google+ account, however users will now have the option to decline from doing so.
But what does this mean for Google+? The company's social network struggles have long been documented, so it could be an indication that Google is finally accepting Google+'s fate. Or perhaps there were just so many complaints from users that Google finally relented; it was never good practice to force users to sign up for something they would never use.
Further given the huge popularity that other social media platforms enjoys with users, it is doubtful that the service will ever become as ingrained with one's digital lifestyle like Facebook and Twitter.
The fact that people no longer need to signup could definitely lower engagement and usage, so we'll see how this pans out in the coming months.
