Category: Google Plus

Over two years after Microsoft discontinued support for Internet Explorer 10, Google has announced they will stop supporting the legacy browser on Google+ starting October 23, 2018.  It means that Google will no longer do backwards compatibility testing for IE 10 and rendering issues or access to certain features could be limited after that date.

Technically Google across all of G Suite only supports the latest version of Internet Explorer, v11, as well as Microsoft Edge from the Redmond, Washington company.  This is more-or-less just solidifying that stance in relation to G+.

A new cloud-side change is rolling out to the Google+ app for Android that brings the same “Delete, Report, and Block” feature that is found on the web site to your mobile.  So long as you have the latest G+ app installed on your phone, you should see this new feature roll out over the course of the next few days.

Google+ has had a spam problem for a long time and the company has continued to try to give administrators of communities and collections the tools needed to deal with it.  The ability to delete a comment, report it and block the user is something that admins have had for a while but with this update, everyone gets it.

Over the course of the next few days, a new version of Google+ will be rolling out to Android users.  While visually the app won’t look much different than it does today, Google’s Leo Deegan has taken to the community site to let everyone know what to expect.  Given he is the lead engineer of G+, he should know.

Though it very closely resembles the current app, this new version is the culmination of a complete rewrite of many core features using Google’s latest Android app infrastructure which will allow our Android team to build new features on a modern tech stack.

During the rewrite, we were able to build in some subtle updates. For instance, stream rendering and scrolling have been improved, the photo lightbox has been redesigned, comment options slide up from a bottom sheet, and grey-spammed comments are now viewable by post authors.

All of these changes point to a smoother experience overall with the community app.

Google+ has a new update rolling out for the community network on both Android and iOS.  The update brings a new advanced search function to the apps, much like the search functionality of Google Search itself.  In this new update, you will be able to use search operators to do specific searches within Google+

Google has already built a guide for these new search functions on the support site which will outline in detail how they can be used.  Some of these new functions include:

• From:  To identify a post from a G+ users
• Has:  Has an attachment such as an image or Google Doc file
• Before:  Before a specific date
• After:  After a specific date
• Commenter:  Search for a specific commenter on a specific post

As you can see, you can get quite specific in your searching to pinpoint a specific post or person.

A few weeks ago, Google announced that they would be rolling out location sharing in Google Maps.  The new feature will allow you to share your location with friends and family for a set period of time and it will work across Android and iOS devices.  As a part of that effort, it appears the company is starting to shut down location sharing within Google+.

Google+ has had the ability to share your location for a long while but if you attempt to use it now, you are greeted with a splash page indicating that the feature is moving to Maps.  The tricky bit is that it hasn’t fully rolled out to Google Maps yet either.

In the latest update to the Google+ app for Android, Google has quietly removed the menu link to Google Spaces.  It could be the first indicator that the carcass of yet another social networking attempt by Google is about to be thrown on the pile.  And frankly, it wouldn’t be all that shocking.  The change can be found in the 9.6.0 build of Google+ for Android and if you open up the menu using the hamburger menu or a swipe from the left side of your screen, you’ll see that there is no link to Spaces.

The idea behind Spaces was never fully articulated.  It was somewhat like Circles in the original Google+ but it was also aimed to allow you to create a “space”, invite friends so that you could discuss the space’s defined topic.  You could also share videos, images, texts and other media.  In theory, a pretty cool idea but Spaces never really took off.