Google+ opens for general use
Google+, the Internet search giant’s rival to Facebook, is now available to the public.
Google Inc. announced the move Tuesday but said the social networking service was not yet a fully finished product. Technically, it’s still in the beta stage. Nine new features are being added this week and more are planned.
“For the past 12 weeks we’ve been in field trial, and during that time we’ve listened and learned a great deal,” Vic Gundotra, the Google senior vice president in charge of Google+, said in a statement. “We’re nowhere near done, but with the improvements we’ve made so far we’re ready to move from field trial to beta, and introduce our 100th feature: open sign-ups.”
Google launched its challenge to Facebook 90 days ago, as an invitation-only field trial. Since then, as Gundotra noted, 100 features and other changes have been added to Google+, the last nine being announced Tuesday.
Although Google has a lot of ground to cover before it reaches Facebook’s user base of more than 750 million, Google+ has grown rapidly, with more than 10 million users as of July, the last time that the company reported such numbers.
Of the new features being added, the most useful one might be the addition of improved search.
The revamped search feature allows users to search not only for other users as before but also for user posts and photos. Gundotra said that more than 1 billion items are shared through Google+ each day.
Hangouts, Google+’s multiuser video chat feature, is getting some new features as well. Users can now view the same photos or videos in “screen sharing,” use a feature called “sketchpad” to draw images on screen together, edit a Google Doc text file together in a Hangout, or even create a video chat Hangout room based on topics such as music, sports or movies, so users can curate their conversations with one another.
Google+ users can now also join a Hangout video chat session on their smartphones or tablets using the Google+ Android app, and an Apple iPhone version of the app will be added soon, Gundotra said.
Google+ Hangouts is also getting a bit more like Ustream. A new feature called “On Air” will allow Google+ users to broadcast their Hangouts to the public for anyone to watch. In keeping with the Hangouts theme, as many as nine other Google+ users can take part in a Hangout On Air.
All of the new features should be implemented over the next week, he said.
