Google+ vs Facebook: 10 reasons why Google+ is far better

As PCWorld rightly pointed some­time out last year, the com­par­ison of Google+ vs Facebook (which the masses gen­er­ally draw) is an un­even one. Google+ is a far bigger pic­ture for Google than one might ima­gine: my own way of put­ting it, as I have said to many of my ac­quaint­ances, is that Google is on its way to be­coming a Skynet, al­though in a good way as things now stand.

+You This is part 1 of a 4-part art­icle series on Google+. Read the others here: Google+ vs Facebook: 10 reasons why Google+ is far better 5 Tips for Photography on Google+ Google+ Daily Photography Themes How to make the best use of your Google+ profile

For Google as a cor­por­a­tion, the Google+ Project is a land­mark ven­ture where they aim to bring to­gether all their products, most of them the best in their niche, to make each thrive on the other and de­liver an in­fin­itely better user ex­per­i­ence, cen­tering on a users–you guessed it–Google+ profile.

Therefore a better way to put the tie would be, Google versus Facebook. Google+ simply isn’t one product any­more. In my opinion, it is quite ready to take on the Google Search robe as the corporation’s face on the Web. And the pro­ject has seam­lessly in­teg­rated all Google products to such an ex­tent, Google+, with re­spect to a given user, is really all of Google.

So let us see ten unique places I have spotted, over my stay on Google+ (and since I bid goodbye to Facebook quite a while ago,) where Google fares better enough than Facebook to con­vince any­body to switching to it. Personally, though, I re­com­mend people not to switch: right now, only se­lect people who share posts worth others’ while are pop­u­lating Google+¹and we do not want this be­coming just an­other Facebook.

Without fur­ther ado, let us go through the ten key as­pects I have in mind.

1. Google re­tains your privacy

I re­call some­body once saying Zuckerberg (de­serves a bravery award be­cause he) values his pri­vacy more than yours.

Facebook has a habit of com­pulsorily re­quiring you to make cer­tain sens­itive data of yours pub­licly vis­ible. Google+ has no such strings at­tached. In fact, all Google re­quires you to ad­here to strictly is that you do not pose as some­body you are not. Understandably, going against this rule will get you banned from all Google products, but I think it is a good thing con­sid­ering that it will filter out those char­ac­ter­istic Facebook posters (who were prob­ably once char­ac­ter­istic MySpace posters) who waste your time, right at the start.

In short, though, Google+ is de­signed to allow you to re­tain ab­so­lute con­trol of your pri­vacy at every point of usage, with both spe­cific set­tings and gen­eral preferences.

2. You can say bye with a snap of your finger

No, really. If you have ever tried de­leting your Facebook ac­count, you will know ex­actly what  mean. It is im­possible to fully de­lete your posts and up­dates. And pic­tures. And notes. And sensitive/embarrassing talk if any.

On Google+ you can use their Data Liberation tool to down­load all your data, pack up and leave Google+ without a public trace. And when I say all, I mean ab­so­lutely everything: your videos, Picasa web al­bums, shares/updates, con­tacts and any­thing else you can think of.

If you have not done it already, I strongly urge you to try de­leting your Facebook ac­count. Do not worry ac­ci­dent­ally de­leting it; you cannot de­lete in even on purpose.

3.  Better group activities

If there is one Google+ fea­ture (apart from photo sharing) that beats every other so­cial net­work hands down, it has to be Hangouts.

Have you seen what Google did with that poor web camera you get fit into your laptop? I have been in­vited to roughly thirty hangouts so far (not public hangouts, spe­cific invite-only hangouts) and the in­ter­ac­tion is just per­fect. I will not be sur­prised if Facebook comes up with a coun­ter­part, but given the present as­sets, it would not be hard to guess whose would be better–and who has a head start?

4. Professional set­ting on Google+

If LinkedIn spelled formal and pro­fes­sional so­cial net­working up to this point, I am be­gin­ning to feel Google+ will take over now.

Your pro­file on Google+ is slick, smooth, min­im­alist and you are in enough con­trol to take out spe­cific things and en­tirely hide un­ne­ces­sary stuff. This, coupled with the fact that Google+ has a smaller user base of se­lect in­di­viduals, makes way for re­cog­ni­tion, good busi­ness ex­posure, personal/freelance pop­ularity and so on.

If you have not begun to do so already, I re­com­mend you har­ness the true power of Google+ in this regard.

5. Integration within the Web

Some may con­sider this to be the most im­portant point so far, but I think fifth is where it should stand: but, yes, it is both im­portant and vital.

When I was in­vited to try Google+ be­fore it was re­leased to the public, I had already begun using Google’s black bar on top without real­ising others I knew did not really have it on their ac­counts! The bar was a tad dif­ferent then, but the concept re­mained quite the same even after de­vel­op­ment: to make your net­work ac­cess­ible from any Google product at any time.

The way I see it, this would be over half our time on the Web. Consider Google Search, Picasa, Google+, Analytics, GMail, YouTube and any of the sev­eral other Google products you can think of. The slim black bar lets you con­nect to most of these–with spe­cific focus on Google+–from any other product website.

6. Better net­work management

One thing I used to des­pise on Facebook was the way people there had (and prob­ably still have) hun­dreds of so-called friends. If you  cannot re­count the name of every single one of them, you might as well not add them. Friend re­quests and status up­dates were making and breaking jobs and relations–too much hold for a ro­botic binary pro­gramme, don’t you think?

On Google+ you can neatly or­ganise your net­work into any number of cat­egories, call it any­thing you want and share spe­cific­ally, without wasting the pre­cious time of those who do not give a damn about that par­tic­ular up­date of yours.

This also nul­li­fies my pre­vious ques­tion, just in case you are still won­dering. Google’s Circles is ar­gu­ably their finest concept, mir­roring daily life: how we make dif­ferent circles of friends, meet and talk and share dif­fer­ently with each of them and so on. And Google+ al­lows you to bring that price­less habit onto your second life on the Web.

It ad­heres to the age old for­mula: rep­licate real life for the best results!

7. Better (best?) mo­bile application

Whether it be iPhone or Android or any other second-tier mo­bile OS, you have a Google+ ap­plic­a­tion that stamps the rest to the ground.

Unfortunately, I got my Google+ Android app only a week be­fore its public re­lease and I did not have enough spe­cial time to ap­pre­ciate its nu­merous, rich fea­tures fully. Over time, how­ever, there are some things you will no­tice².

Given that Android is also a Google product, the com­menting, up­dating and other such fea­tures subtly in­teg­rate them­selves into the design of the OS and make ac­cessing Google+ a breeze un­like Facebook’s app, or in­stance, which re­quires you to ac­cess the homescreen re­peatedly, for a lot of reasons.

8. Easy to search within Google+

Google’s third much hyped fea­ture is Sparks. I hardly took no­tice of it be­fore public release–and I doubt any­body else did–but the true power of Sparks be­came ap­parent only much later when a good lot of con­tent had been shared. It was like a small, but equally in­tense, Google Search stitched into Google+ that al­lowed you to search your net­work with great ease.

While it is clear that Google’s pre­vious stand as a search en­gine played a major role in this, what is more im­portant is that this fea­ture, which seems all so ob­vious now, had been over­looked in every other so­cial net­work prior to Google+; and in my opinion, none–even if they do ap­pear at a later point of time–will be in a po­s­i­tion to beat Google’s Sparks simply be­cause of Google’s leverage in the searching world online.

9. Better photo sharing and tagging

It is by no means an over­state­ment to say Google+ is the new photographer’s para­dise. There was (still is) 500px, Flickr and so on, but Google’s policy, Picasa in­teg­ra­tion, tag­ging tech­no­logy, viewing–and the ele­phantine pho­to­grapher count that ex­ists here–seems to have beat them all in one sweep.

I know many pho­to­graphers who are leaving other sites slowly but con­fid­ently to back-file their en­tire work to Google+. As for tag­ging people, when I was on Facebook, many months ago, I kept stressing on a par­tic­ular clause in their terms of use that said nobody could tag a user without their con­sent. But (rather in­tel­li­gently) Facebook made no at­tempt to stop such tag­ging and it an­noyed me severely. On Google+, how­ever, tag­ging a person no­ti­fies them and the tag ap­pears only if they concur. So that is bid­ding goodbye to childish tag­ging in un­re­lated and/or com­prom­ising pho­to­graphs that Facebook came to be known for even if not quite publicly.

10. Google listens to you

That is right. Google values user feed­back more than any other mul­tina­tional cor­por­a­tion I have come across.

Know that little grey box that says Send Feedback on the bottom right? It is quite gen­er­ally known that the only people who value feed­back enough to ac­tu­ally change their site are those who run per­sonal web­sites, blogs and such. But Google has taken things in good spirit, and that feed­back form is ac­tu­ally more ad­vanced than it seems at first.

You are al­lowed to high­light parts of the page where you plan to give sug­ges­tions, point out to er­rors etc. as well as black out any per­sonal in­form­a­tion you wish to keep hidden. Then you type in your sug­ges­tion and send it to Google.

Will any­thing happen? Trust me, they ac­tu­ally listen to you. As I said be­fore, this might not ex­actly be what one would ex­pect from a com­pany the size of Google but there have been sug­ges­tions I have my­self made and a number of them I have seconded or chipped into and these have ac­tu­ally been ad­opted as changes in Google+

It is fun to see your sug­ges­tion has been valued and things have been changed for the better. This also keeps with Google’s open-source spirit and makes the net­work one that is run by its users rather than an un­seen body. Good uses people have been making of the feed­back box is re­questing for slight al­ter­a­tions to the ex­isting Google+ terms of usage and there have been mul­tiple re­cords where Google has brought out changes.

This flex­ib­ility is by far the best reason–from a user sat­is­fac­tion standpoint–to switch to Google+ and dump Facebook for good.

I am not in any way as­so­ci­ated with Google or Facebook, and this re­view has been from a neutral stand­point. Clearly, I state that the scale tips in fa­vour of Google as my list clarifies!

Before you leave, do not forget to join me on Google+ and circle VHBelvadi.com too!

1. Statistics show 1. most of these are male 2. most are pro­fes­sion­ally ori­ented people 3. the users ap­pear to have un­an­im­ously main­tained a formal am­bi­ence around Google+ 4. there is less than even a frac­tion of the non­sense, cat jokes floating around on Facebook. If asked to put it bluntly, I think I would say, “Google+ is the Facebook for ma­tured people.” [↩]
2. I only speak for Android phones, be­cause I have never used Google+ on any other OS and have little in­ten­tions of doing so in the fu­ture [↩]