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Bradley Horowitz on ailing Google+: Islands in the stream, that is what we are ...

Network thingy becomes an, er, embarrassment of thingies

Google product veep Bradley Horowitz is now heading up the ad giant's fading fast Google+ service, but its name appears to have put the willies up Mountain View's execs lately – to the point where they simply don't mention it any more.

Horowitz confirmed in a short statement that he had, in effect, taken over from the "network thingy's" previous helmsman David Besbris, who has reportedly left the division.

Besbris was wheeled in as a replacement for Vic Gundotra in April 2014, after Google+ had been melded into the multinational's product line-up.

In September last year, indications slipped out of the Chocolate Factory that appeared to show Google had lost faith in its product. It quietly removed mandatory signups to Google+, which new Gmail users had been automatically shoved into when creating accounts on the company's web-based email service.

Earlier today, Horowitz said in a carefully crafted statement on his Google+ account:

Just wanted to confirm that the rumours are true – I’m excited to be running Google’s Photos and Streams products!

It’s important to me that these changes are properly understood to be positive improvements to both our products and how they reach users.

Google+, though, now officially seems to have become a dirty word back at the data-scraping ranch. ®

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