Dive Brief:

• Google threw in the towel on forcing Google+ across its various products, such as YouTube.
• While media coverage has been sounding the funeral bells for Google+, both Google and marketers think the platform isn’t quite ready for burial.
• The most likely future for Google+ is for its best features to be separated from the platform, such as the recent move to make Google Photos its own app.

Dive Insight:

Not so fast on all those obituaries for the platform appearing across media this week. Sure Google+ never even came close to the original goal of becoming a Facebook killer, but Google and marketers both see a future for Google+ even it that future is more about its better features separately than the entire platform.

"Google+ as we know it is dead, but there will be pieces of it, once spun off, that we will use in the future," Matt Rednor, CEO at Decoded Advertising, told Adweek. "Hangouts, for example, is a much better video-communication platform than [the iPhone's] FaceTime and could be a successful tool with much greater reach if rolled out as a separate product."

And in a blog post, Google VP of streams, photos and sharing Bradley Horowitz corroborated Rednor's view, writing, “We’re going to continue focusing Google+ on helping users connect around the interest they love and retire it as the mechanism by which people share and engage within other Google products.”