…as Slate proclaims today. This is just another (intentional?) logic fallacy article caused by over generalization or the urge for sensationalistic, traffic driving titles. Where are they right though, is the point that Google+ has no chance (did it ever had?) to overthrown Facebook dominance in the (generalists) social networks competition.

There are too many users with too much history and new features added periodically on Facebook so the chance of repeating the histories of HI5 and Myspace are pretty slim.

On the other hand, Google+ is too big for Google to fail. Doing that can have worse effects than the failures that Google Buzz and Google Wave.

Instead of dying, Google+ will be re branded. From the social network it tried to be in the social hub it can be. This means that all the current (and future) assets that Google has, will be slowly and nicely integrated together under the same concept, and they will no longer be private tools but social, collaborative instruments.

And this process is not new, but in these ADHD driven times, people are (too) quickly to forget and (too) quickly prone to repeat the mistakes of the history. Google is now in the same position that Yahoo was a few years ago, but maybe they will make it work. A few years ago, Yahoo had profiles. And then they thought that they have a large enough user base to monetize those profiles and turn them into a social network. And so Yahoo 360 was born. For reasons I cannot remember, that miserably failed (as Google+ will soon) and they turned to the social hub approach and Yahoo Pulse was born (which again miserably fails failed and it will be returning to its origins as Yahoo Profiles).

But Google stands a big chance here for multiple reasons:

• Not like Yahoo, Google has a lot a real assets that people actually use
• Google has a mobile platform (and a browser, and a netbook OS) where they can push their product
• Google is deeply integrating G+ into the search results through authorship. Every author out there wants their search results optimized so they will join, use and exploit the platform

So Google+ is not dead and will not die. It will just follow its own course on another more successful track