Don't forget that they deleted all Google+ data when they shut it down. And that was not a small service
To add insult to injury, they show their standard 404 message when I click a link to an old Google+ post.
And by doing that, piratically killed RSS. Sure, RSS is still around, but lots of sites dropped support and lots of users stopped using it.
For me, Feedly did fill some of the niche there, but it does not have that Reader or whatever next community was there to have "share with friends and discuss" part. But HN covered that part a bit too
Never forget.
I’m still feeling the pain from that. They built the best (for my use case) RSS reader, then completely shut it down. I wish companies would sometimes consider transitioning projects into the public space for the greater good. Look at what Microsoft has done with VSCode and the community editions.
I think of it as a favor, made me realize RSS is better on its own.