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Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Google Friend Connect- My 2 cents

There's a bit of commotion lately over Google's decision to remove GCF for all non-blogger websites. And while I do think that this isn't a great move on the part go Google, I don't think it warrants all the stress it's getting.

A lot of people who use blogger are now stressing over whether GCF will go away for them too. But, chances are it most likely won't. You have to look at this from the perspective of Google, who is looking at this from the perspective of a company trying to get all its users onto its websites and platforms. The only reason that Google is taking away GCF for non-Blogger users is to encourage people to use Google +. They even say so in the official blog post about it:
What reason would they possibly have to take it out of Blogger blogs? The answer: none. It would only harm them detrimentally, something they obviously don't want. There are tens of thousands of people using Blogger, most of whom use GCF and like it. If they were to take that away from their own product, they would be harming themselves. Bloggers would get irritated and most likely switch to another platform out of protest, and then where would Google be? They know that, so they won't do it. It's really a business decision more than anything.

I really think that they should keep GCF for everyone, because there are a lot of bloggers that I follow using it that aren't Blogger bloggers (haha, that looks kinda funny) and it's just going to make it a bit more difficult to follow them since I don't use my feedreader very often. But, Google is trying to herd everyone into using Google +, so, they are unfortunately probably not going to go back on their decision.

So, if you're stressing, my advice is to not give it anymore thought. If you're a Blogspot blogger, don't worry about it. And if you're a blogger using another platform, then I'll gladly follow you via feed burner. :) It's that simple. And who knows? Maybe someone else will step up to the plate and make another type of follower widget, a better one, in the absence of GCF! Necessity is indeed the mother of invention.


  1. That sounds like a well-reasoned approach!

  2. Well said. I see a lot of Blogger blogs already removing the widget. I'm like "WHY!!!!!????". They're not removing it for Blogger blogs, but lots of people are jumping the gun on this one. I took the proactive approach of adding alternate ways of following me on my blog, but I'm keeping GFC until it's taken away from me.

  3. Ugh, I didn't know about this until I read your post. I'm on Wordpress and this is pretty upsetting for me. The main advantage of GFC isn't so much allowing people to follow you (which is pretty easily done via RSS, Feedburner, etc) but for you to be able to see who is following you in one place. And it's a two-click follow too.




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