Google+ to be streamlined and unlinked from other Google services

A lot of these changes have fuelled the “Google+ is dead” crowd, and this next update is sure to refuel those fires.

In a blog post today, Google announced that it’s going to spend the coming months removing your Google+ profile from products where it “doesn’t make sense”.

“When we launched Google+, we set out to help people discover, share and connect across Google like they do in real life”, the company said. In a separate post on Google’s YouTube blog, the company explains that starting today, the comments you make on YouTube will no longer show up on Google+ and (crucially) vice versa. There have been complaints over the last couple of years that you needed a Google + profile to act as your identity.

If you already have a Google+ account you will be given the option to remove it in the future.

For example, many elements of Google+ Photos have been moved into the new Google Photos app, and we’re well underway putting location sharing into Hangouts and other apps, where it really belongs. More information should follow closer to the date that users will be able to make this change.

These requirements were meant to improve comment quality on YouTube, and promote Google+ itself, but were met by resistance by numerous site’s users. The idea behind Google+ profiles was to give users a single identity across all the company’s platforms.

You’ll see these changes roll out in stages over several months.

Google took a first step towards a major shift in its social strategy Monday by separating YouTube from Google+. Google is also promising those who have their YouTube and Google+ accounts linked will be able to unbind them soon. Are they the right move to making Google+ a better service or an indication of something else?