Following the announcement made by the new product VP Bradley Horowitz, Google+ is taking a new direction by redesigning its Photos and Streams feature as two separate entities. In addition to the new scheme, Google+ is also placing its Hangouts communication platform at a considerable distance from the social network. This means that all of the three will be handled and developed independently.
The reorganization is perhaps a timely decision for a social network that has been criticized for being unable to match the popularity of other Google services such as Chrome, Maps, Gmail and Search. In an interview, Sundar Pichai, a Google+ executive, has hinted the split as he talked about creating three focus areas departing from getting a singular treatment.
"I think increasingly you'll see us focus on communications, photos and the Google+ Stream as three important areas, rather than being thought of as one area," said Pichai.
Now that Photos and Streams have been separated, it would be interesting to know what lies ahead on Google's communications service otherwise known as Google Hangouts. For now, Horowitz has confirmed in his post at Google+ that he will be handling Google's Photos and Streams products.
"Just wanted to confirm that the rumors are true -- I'm excited to be running Google's Photos and Streams products! It's important to me that these changes are properly understood to be positive improvements to both our products and how they reach users," wrote Horowitz.
As for Google Hangouts, Horowitz made a statement back in December on how broad is its scope.
"It's texting, it's telephony, it's one-to-one, it's many-to-many, it's consumer, it's enterprise," said Horowitz. "We're trying to do something broader that helps people communicate wherever they are using whatever products they prefer. It's not like throwing a dart and hitting one app like ephemeral imaging."
As a standalone product, Photos will definitely become more suitably matched for the Photos app found on Android devices. The new focus could also allow Google to enhance its archiving prowess and take advantage of editing features such as the so-called "auto-awesome" effects. There's also the possibility to compete better with some popular photo-sharing services such as 500px and Flickr.
There's no information yet on just how Google plans to do a makeover on Hangouts. Since it's an all-purpose communication tool that incorporates audio, video and text messaging at the same time, Google must be taking things one step at a time. After all, the company wanted their users to understand such changes to any of their products as "positive improvements."
