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Sunday, February 3, 2019

How Many Blogger Hosted Blogs Are Going to be Hosed By the Impending Google + Shutdown? Judging by the Latest G + Update - Many

Here's the latest Google + Impending shutdown update. There is a part that should greatly concern bloggers that use Blogger and Google + for post comments.
Shutting down Google+ for consumer (personal) accounts on April 2, 2019 
January 30, 2019 
In December 2018, we announced our decision to shut down Google+ for consumers in April 2019 due to low usage and challenges involved in maintaining a successful product that meets consumers’ expectations. We want to thank you for being part of Google+ and provide next steps, including how to download your photos and other content. 
On April 2nd, your Google+ account and any Google+ pages you created will be shut down and we will begin deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts. Photos and videos from Google+ in your Album Archive and your Google+ pages will also be deleted. You can download and save your content, just make sure to do so before April. Note that photos and videos backed up in Google Photos will not be deleted. 
The process of deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts, Google+ Pages, and Album Archive will take a few months, and content may remain through this time. For example, users may still see parts of their Google+ account via activity log and some consumer Google+ content may remain visible to G Suite users until consumer Google+ is deleted. 
As early as February 4th, you will no longer be able to create new Google+ profiles, pages, communities or events. See the full FAQ for more details and updates leading up to the shutdown. 
If you’re a Google+ Community owner or moderator, you may download and save your data for your Google+ Community. Starting early March 2019, additional data will be available for download, including author, body, and photos for every community post in a public community. Learn more 
If you sign in to sites and apps using the Google+ Sign-in button, these buttons will stop working in the coming weeks but in some cases may be replaced by a Google Sign-in button. You’ll still be able to sign in with your Google Account wherever you see Google Sign-in buttons. Learn more 
If you’ve used Google+ for comments on your own or other sites, this feature will be removed from Blogger by February 4th and other sites by March 7th. All your Google+ comments on all sites will be deleted starting April 2, 2019.  (empasis mine) Learn more 
If you’re a G Suite customer, Google+ for your G Suite account should remain active. Contact your G Suite administrator for more details. You can also expect a new look and new features soon. Learn more
If you're a developer using Google+ APIs or Google+ Sign-in, click here to see how this will impact you. 
From all of us on the Google+ team, thank you for making Google+ such a special place. We are grateful for the talented group of artists, community builders, and thought leaders who made Google+ their home. It would not have been the same without your passion and dedication.
So, I went with the learn more link and this is what I got:


There was nothing more to learn. Some bloggers, folks like Zak Smith are going to lose years of comments. 1,000s of comments. Sure you can download the comments but what good does that do. Are you manually going to reload them as single comments streaming the whole thread? Besides, the way Google + comments worked in Blogger, you'd have different threads based upon communities where it was shared. What a fucking shit show.


Google enabled the integration of Blogger and Google + 6 years ago. A large number of Blogger bloggers made the switch and now they are fucked.

Needless to say, moving The Tavern to another host is on the short list of things to do. I suspect Blogger may be the next Google app to face the firing squad.

2 comments:

  1. As soon as this came up, I replaced it with the new Disqus widget. Easy, peasy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am fortunate that I already went through this exercise last year when I moved Greyhawk Grognard from a Blogspot address to a hosted Wordpress site. I found the only thing that really worked to move everything over was an add-in called "Blogger Importer Extended" by Pipdig (it's easily found if you search for it). It's not free, but it cost less than $10, if I recall correctly, and was very worth it. The free importer from Wordpress didn't do the job at all.

    I don't recall if there was a way to just import the comments, but for people who are contemplating moving away from Blogger/Blogspot entirely, do it sooner rather than later (so there are comments to transfer), and I found this add-in very helpful.

    ReplyDelete

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