feb 20, 2012 - What On Earth Is Google Doing with Orkut?

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Given the declining mindshare for Orkut, however, Google’s continued support for the service doesn’t seem to make much sense. Now is the time to strike, before Orkut turns into a wasteland of inactive accounts. Now is the time to shift those users over to Google+.

What’s surprising is how gentle the Orkut to Google+ shift is beginning – a huge difference from Google’s other efforts at forcing G+ signups across its platform. New Orkut iPhone apps? That’s a confusing message for a company that has pushed Google+ at all costs since its 2011 launch, even to the extent of compromising search results and cluttering up its stark homepage with a “share” button. But with Orkut, Google just treats a large chunk of the world’s social networking users as “those other folks,” using that “different product.”


Sorry, Google, that’s wrong. If your agenda is to kindly shove Google+ down the web’s collective throats through controversial Google+ search result favoritism, forced registrations, cross-platform unification and the like, why does Orkut get a pass? Look, I may not be a fan of the pushy, inorganic growth strategy Google has adopted for Google+, but it’s a strategy. And 90 million accounts later, one could even argue that it’s a strategy that’s working. But Google, if you’re going to go all in, don’t flounce around with Orkut. There’s a narrow window to push those Google-loving, social networking holdouts from one Google product to the next.

Kill the Orkut iPhone apps, forget the silly badges, and announce to the entire Orkut user base that all data will be migrated (or will be exportable) to Google+ in X number of days. Then prepare your blog post touting all the new users Google+ now has. (Sigh).

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