For a company renowned for its successes, google's track record in social networking services isn't impressive. There have been several ill-conceived projects to provide an alternative to facebook, some of which were almost dead on arrival. For instance google wave and google buzz were both greeted with widespread confusion - or just ignored-when they started in 2009 and 2010 respectively. Google's single social-networking success, orkut, has only taken off in brazil and india, which together account for around 90 per cent of its traffic. Elsewhere, orkut is totally unknown. But, despite its growing list of failures, google is now having another crack at social networking, with a service called google+. And this time, it appears to be taking it rather seriously.
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