Google+ divided into Photos and Streams, with new boss
Google's social network gets a new leader in Brad Horowitz, and likely will see the Hangouts communication service stand alone, too. — BARCELONA — Google is taking another pass at energizing its Google+ social networking service …
Context & Ripple Effects
The split follows days of signals rather than a sudden pivot: an exec had already hinted at a Photos/Hangouts/G+ split in late February, and the same day this news broke, TechCrunch reported that David Besbris was out and longtime VP of Product Bradley Horowitz was taking over. What changes is organizational, not cosmetic — Google+ stops being one product and becomes a portfolio of separately run ones.
The payoff arrived on schedule: by May, Bloomberg sources said Google would unveil a new photo service fully independent of Google+ at I/O, and Horowitz himself framed the spun-out Photos as 'like Gmail for your images.' A November TechCrunch retrospective credited the spin-outs — alongside Communities' early traction — with giving the remains of Google+ renewed focus.
First-order effects
- Bradley Horowitz now runs Google+ as two distinct products, Photos and Streams, replacing David Besbris at the top — leadership accountability is redrawn around product lines instead of the network.
- Hangouts is positioned to stand alone, pulling real-time communication out from under the social network's umbrella.
Second-order effects
- An independent Photos product, unveiled at I/O per the Bloomberg sourcing, has to compete on its own merits against dedicated photo services rather than riding Google+ distribution — while the remaining Google+ refocuses on what Communities proved people actually used.
- Splitting Hangouts means Google must give messaging its own roadmap and identity, no longer treating it as a feature bolted onto the network.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Google's social strategy shifts from challenging Facebook head-on with a monolithic network to unbundling single-purpose products (photos, chat, communities) that each fight their own category battle — a structure the 2016 moderation and UI updates suggest stuck.
- The move prefigures a broader industry lesson: bundling services into a social network can suppress them, and spinning winners out lets them compound independently.
The trend: Large internet platforms are unwinding bundled social networks into standalone, category-focused products, with each spin-out judged on its own competitive merits rather than its contribution to the network.