Leo L. Schwab
4 April 2019 ·
File under Sardonically Amusing:
As you know, Google euthanized Google-Plus this week (because there's only so much a company pulling in $30 billion/quarter can be expected to do, and apparently the YouTube comment system was more worth preserving). Anyhoo, since G+ is now dead, there's no point in the app taking up space on my phone, so I went to delete it... ...And discovered that I couldn't, because it's one of those perma-installed apps, the ones you can only ever hope to disable indefinitely. Oh, you hubristic dopes. So I put a wooden stake through it as best I could. (In truth, I'm actually not all that bummed at the G+ shutdown.)
9You, Richard Sexton, Andrew Beals and 6 others 16 comments
Martin Bogomolni It will disappear in the next security update for android
Leo L. Schwab You funny guy. This is a Galaxy S6; we don't get security updates anymore... 4
Martin Bogomolni Install a rooted/jailbroken upgrade firmware?
Michael Sinz Don't use an Android device - your security will vastly improve.
Martin Bogomolni Michael Sinz : If you run AOSP and do a tiny bit of hardening ( I mean _minimal_ effort ) I don't think your statement is particularly defensible. ( vs running an Apple device )
Martin Bogomolni However -- I will concede that the Apple App store _is_ much safer than google play when it comes to audited apps.
Michael Sinz Martin Bogomolni Well, depends on what you mean - if you switch your device so it only does phone calls and *maybe* web browser.
The standard storage of your data (phonebook, etc) is far, far better in iOS as is the general isolation of apps. This does not mean that apps themselves are safe - the Facebook app will share data you give the app (which, if you allow it, includes location information, contacts, photos) with Facebook. But that is usually what people want. It is very hard to do cross-app data transition without the user being told/asked that it happens. However, bad actor apps (there was this "Bible" app that would report to their server every time you used it, including where/etc. - and it was supposed to just be a way to search the text of bible on your device) do still exist.
Chris English Me neither. I used it for ingress a bit...then at work some until they blocked us from it. Happy to see it go, though I still wish Facebook had some competition. 1

Richard Sexton why don't we bring back a modern version of usenet? if you build it, they will come.
Chris English usenet news rocked. Spam killed it. I think those things are diametrically opposed and cannot be reconciled.
Erica Douglass xda-developers.com Find a bare firmware for your device. Make sure to match not just the model but the entire model number of the device (I think Samsung made at least 3 Galaxy S6 models, if not more.)
XDA-Developers Android Forums
XDA-DEVELOPERS.COM
Martin Bogomolni Erica - do you have a firmware you'd recommend for the late-model LG phones?
William Volk G+ is a prime example of how stove-piped organizations fail. When it was launched there was no social graph developers could connect to, no mobile api etc. etc.
George Mitsuoka https://arstechnica.com/.../googles-constant-product.../...
Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand ARSTECHNICA.COM
Dave Haynie I actually liked G+. It was substantially better as a place to mix social and photos than FB.
Mark Seiden not only did they shut this down, but also the android mail client inbox, which was much better to my taste than the surviving gmail client.