I apologize for my recent absence. Most of you can probably guess the reason. The death of Google+ has weighed heavily on me since October, both dealing with the horror of losing G+ but then desperately, relentlessly, trying platforms, chasing friends and followers, and connecting with as many as possible. People I deal with in person here probably don’t even know that they were only dealing with my “autopilot personality”. I wasn’t even there, as my mind was on other things.
The past three weeks have been consumed by the Archive Team project to capture all of G+ for the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Google+ is the biggest project the team has ever undertaken and it was on a tight deadline. Early on, things were obviously going too slowly. Fortunately, many people volunteered to help in the final few days and we nearly completed the project. We got 98% of all G+ profiles and over 90% of communities.
During the final two days, Google was throttling our access, else we would have gotten 100%. It would be a lie to say that it wasn’t exciting. We were driven like madmen, 24/7. A lot of brains and money donations were put together, and the Archive Team repeatedly, many times, pulled off heroic exploits to get it all done despite the obstacles and with limited funding. 1.43 petabytes (1.43 million gigabytes) is A LOT of data to find storage for on fast machines with fast 10G connections, and do it with almost no money. At times, the data rate reached 50 gigabits per second, which is also a tribute to Google’s impressive infrastructure.
The final few days were pretty much hell, combined with the grief of losing G+. I completely lost my appetite for food. I normally listen to a wide range of music, especially classical. The past few days, the only music I could tolerate was mindless Chill Wave. Hah.
Some efforts to save remaining communities is underway but the window is rapidly closing. Google is deleting everything very quickly. One of the major communities that was missed was NASA. A short while ago, just as the URL list was ready and it was about to be rescued, Google deleted the community. Gone.
My G+ account was shut down about ten hours ago, and I’m finally coming back to life. Appetite for food has returned. Now begins, for me, a new form of social networking, without G+.
If you didn’t catch it on the once great G+, I can be found here:
Friendica (Federated): shuttersparks@social.isurf.ca
MeWe: mewe.com/i/phillandmeier
Twitter: @KW2P
Hello sir. It is good that we have people like you to preserve things like this before it vanishes forever. I am glad that I met you and am grateful for the G+ experience, but I am pissed at Google for taking it away. Is that wrong of me?
Absolutely not wrong. Unless they change their ways, Google has made a lifelong enemy of me. Henceforth, I will do everything in my power to influence those I work with to steer them away from Google products and throw every obstacle I can think of in Google’s way. I will cast doubt, I will disparage, and do exactly the opposite of what I’ve done for the past 15 years.
They’ve gone to the Dark Side and will get no quarter from me.