Comment by sumanthvepa

I have to disagree with the author. Google+ did not fail. Had it been a startup rather than a Google project, it would have been considered an amazing success. The problem was that the goal of being a Facebook killer was just too ambitious. Had it instead been a social feature amongst Google products it might have served valuable purpose for both Google and its users. Sadly, in a large corporation, every project has to meet some IRR hurdle, even if not explicitly. And at Google that hurdle was artificially high and Google+ could not meet it. This is why Alphabet makes so much sense, as it allows risk levels to be segregated.