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I wish Google had stuck to their guns, called Google+ a social network, and earned users over time. Instead, they decided that 2nd place was not enough, said "

I wish Google had stuck to their guns, called Google+ a social network, and earned users over time. Instead, they decided that 2nd place was not enough, said "just kidding, it was actually an identity service, no, wait, a content discovery platform, yes!", and turned into... whatever it is they are doing today. They could have been the Facebook that is not Facebook, or in Randall Munroe's words, "all I really wanted"[1]. Too bad. [1] https://www.xkcd.com/918/ https://www.xkcd.com/918/

1_2__3 10y ago
Put perhaps a bit glibly, turns out "we're freaking terrified of Facebook" is not a product strategy. At the end of the day this was an executive's pet project in response to what he considered an existential crisis to Googles future. While certainly motivating, that doesn't result in focused or quality services.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dragonwriter 10y ago
> I wish Google had stuck to their guns, called Google+ a social network, and earned users over time. But that wouldn't be sticking to their guns; from their very beginning, Google+ was overtly described as an identity service and social layer tying together Google's consumer services, with the Facebook-like social interface just one feature. (If anything, they've gone further in the direction you seem to prefer of designating G+ as a social network rather than "sticking to their guns", by taking everything that's not the Facebook-like social interface and ripping the G+ branding off of it.) > Instead, they decided that 2nd place was not enough, said "just kidding, it was actually an identity service, no, wait, a content discovery platform, yes!" Actually, I think what they decided is that either Facebook wasn't the existential threat to Google that motivated what was described at the time as a "bet the company" approach, or that at least, if it wasn't, that it was so more because of the cluster of services that it might expand into and which Google was better prepared to compete directly with (and often be ahead of), and not a commonly-branded suite centered around a social feed app. So both the G+ social feed app and the G+ branding applied to a bunch of other things became a lot less important in Google's strategy.
her 10y ago
I agree, Google+ at this point is not exciting to me at all. I don't want to join another behemoth who is just going to mine my data. Especially when things like Patchwork are so promising.
jlarocco 10y ago
Is there really much advantage to a "Facebook that is not Facebook" when it's run by one of the few companies to rival Facebook for shady privacy practices? A "Facebook that's not Facebook" run by Duckduckgo or EFF or something like that would be useful. Run by another privacy destroying advertising company it's not very helpful, IMO.
- bluthru 10y ago
  Exactly, and I don't think they would start competing on privacy.
- reitanqild 10y ago
  I'd say Google seems to be in another league compared to Facebook when it comes to pricacy. Google had the "buzz" fail. For Facebook that seemed to be modus operandi for a while: silently make everything public as long as users didn't complain loudly enough. And Facebook still do from time to time: just look at how they are now exploiting Whatsapp users, something I think they promised not to do when they bought it.
Terr_ 10y ago
What I would have loved is a social-network that with a built-in concept of pseudonyms and potentially-separate identities for separate circles which it honored. Unfortunately, "a good social network" is somewhat at odds with "maximizing ad-impressions", a problem which neither Facebook nor Google are immune to. P.S.: What I mean is that "John Doe" and "John Doe, SDE2" and "JD12345, online gamer" should have no automatic public links between them. People don't merely post/like things with a different audience, they interact as a different mask. Your fellow gamers shouldn't have your work-identity, coworkers shouldn't have your close-friends identity, etc.
- KirinDave 10y ago
  Sadly, the primary audience for those features are people who want fire and forget harassment and "political debate" accounts. We certainly see this in other venues and even on G+ with its poorly enforced identity rules. Many great ideas get crushed under the weight of mediocrity and terrible people abusing it.
- reitanqild 10y ago
  G+ does this, I have more than one profile and I can easily switch between them without logging off, it is the same identity to me and them and a different identity for everyone else. Unfortunately it is named pages or something so it sounds like something else.
  - newscracker 10y ago
    Sorry, I haven't looked at this in a while and searching online seems to confirm my doubt. Isn't a page different from a user profile in the UI, UX and how one can connect with others and how others can connect? In other words, wouldn't having different personas for different circles of people actually require multiple accounts (not multiple pages) and switching between them to look for updates and communicate with the different circles (although it looks like switching is probably made easier and enabled as a feature on Google products)?
    - Thimothy 10y ago
bad_user 10y ago
I really don't think they are in the second place. Twitter fills that spot. The thing is, they had a chance to capture the market of early adopters, but they've lost it in the nymwars. And I know a lot of people try to come up with all sorts of reasons for why Google+ didn't stand a chance against Facebook, ranging from UI to availability of games and the network effect, but no, Google+ appeared at a moment in time when people where nervous about their online privacy and getting tired of Facebook and Google had one chance and totally blew it with their real name policy. But then it got worse, they forced YouTube users to migrate to a Google+ account and thus adopt the real name policy. I mean YouTube, their biggest online community. It has been a total clusterfuck and guess what, YouTube comments are still shitty, even with real names, because many people are in essence jerks and a real name policy isn't going to change that. I sometimes wonder if they were clueless about this, or knew it and did it anyway for advertising value. But lets rewind a little and remember that they killed Google Reader because of Google+. I'll never forget them for Google Reader, I'll never trust their free offerings again. If anything, their current attitude of backtracking from their Google+ push users-be-damned has been nothing but healthy.
- dmix 10y ago
  True, youtube comments are really bad. Not just in terms of content but the interactive experience. This could have been a good opportunity for Google to do something like Disqus did with cross-website identity. With a high-quality messaging UX. But no, Youtube still has second-rate commenting. Even a voting/ranking system closer to Reddit would be better.
  - bnolsen 10y ago
    oh yeah! and g+ notifications do a super crappy job of putting you in a position to efficiently jump to the youtube thread and respond. a stupid tuny window, no good indication what to click on to get there, clicking on things takes you places you don't want to go. makes me want to break things.
- imron 10y ago
  > I really don't think they are in the second place. But maybe they could have been. Unfortunately, their desire not to be second place meant they did all sorts of user unfriendly things in order to rope users in to using the system and boost numbers. Abusing users' trust might work great for short term numbers, but it's bad for the long term.
Sylos 10y ago
I once heard somewhere that before Google+ became a social network, it was supposed to serve as a way for people to insert custom information into Google-searches about themselves. So, if you're for example someone famous, you could create a Google+-profile and put in your detailed information and then when people searched for your name, they'd see the information that you put in. No idea, if it's actually true, but it seems about right, especially also with the name and that Google replaced the plus-operator in Google searches to search through Google+.

1_2__3 10y ago

Put perhaps a bit glibly, turns out "we're freaking terrified of Facebook" is not a product strategy. At the end of the day this was an executive's pet project in response to what he considered an existential crisis to Googles future. While certainly motivating, that doesn't result in focused or quality services.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

dragonwriter 10y ago

> I wish Google had stuck to their guns, called Google+ a social network, and earned users over time. But that wouldn't be sticking to their guns; from their very beginning, Google+ was overtly described as an identity service and social layer tying together Google's consumer services, with the Facebook-like social interface just one feature. (If anything, they've gone further in the direction you seem to prefer of designating G+ as a social network rather than "sticking to their guns", by taking everything that's not the Facebook-like social interface and ripping the G+ branding off of it.) > Instead, they decided that 2nd place was not enough, said "just kidding, it was actually an identity service, no, wait, a content discovery platform, yes!" Actually, I think what they decided is that either Facebook wasn't the existential threat to Google that motivated what was described at the time as a "bet the company" approach, or that at least, if it wasn't, that it was so more because of the cluster of services that it might expand into and which Google was better prepared to compete directly with (and often be ahead of), and not a commonly-branded suite centered around a social feed app. So both the G+ social feed app and the G+ branding applied to a bunch of other things became a lot less important in Google's strategy.

her 10y ago

I agree, Google+ at this point is not exciting to me at all. I don't want to join another behemoth who is just going to mine my data. Especially when things like Patchwork are so promising.

jlarocco 10y ago

Is there really much advantage to a "Facebook that is not Facebook" when it's run by one of the few companies to rival Facebook for shady privacy practices? A "Facebook that's not Facebook" run by Duckduckgo or EFF or something like that would be useful. Run by another privacy destroying advertising company it's not very helpful, IMO.

bluthru 10y ago
Exactly, and I don't think they would start competing on privacy.
reitanqild 10y ago
I'd say Google seems to be in another league compared to Facebook when it comes to pricacy. Google had the "buzz" fail. For Facebook that seemed to be modus operandi for a while: silently make everything public as long as users didn't complain loudly enough. And Facebook still do from time to time: just look at how they are now exploiting Whatsapp users, something I think they promised not to do when they bought it.

Terr_ 10y ago

What I would have loved is a social-network that with a built-in concept of pseudonyms and potentially-separate identities for separate circles which it honored. Unfortunately, "a good social network" is somewhat at odds with "maximizing ad-impressions", a problem which neither Facebook nor Google are immune to. P.S.: What I mean is that "John Doe" and "John Doe, SDE2" and "JD12345, online gamer" should have no automatic public links between them. People don't merely post/like things with a different audience, they interact as a different mask. Your fellow gamers shouldn't have your work-identity, coworkers shouldn't have your close-friends identity, etc.

KirinDave 10y ago
Sadly, the primary audience for those features are people who want fire and forget harassment and "political debate" accounts. We certainly see this in other venues and even on G+ with its poorly enforced identity rules. Many great ideas get crushed under the weight of mediocrity and terrible people abusing it.
reitanqild 10y ago
G+ does this, I have more than one profile and I can easily switch between them without logging off, it is the same identity to me and them and a different identity for everyone else. Unfortunately it is named pages or something so it sounds like something else.
- newscracker 10y ago
  Sorry, I haven't looked at this in a while and searching online seems to confirm my doubt. Isn't a page different from a user profile in the UI, UX and how one can connect with others and how others can connect? In other words, wouldn't having different personas for different circles of people actually require multiple accounts (not multiple pages) and switching between them to look for updates and communicate with the different circles (although it looks like switching is probably made easier and enabled as a feature on Google products)?
  - Thimothy 10y ago

bad_user 10y ago

I really don't think they are in the second place. Twitter fills that spot. The thing is, they had a chance to capture the market of early adopters, but they've lost it in the nymwars. And I know a lot of people try to come up with all sorts of reasons for why Google+ didn't stand a chance against Facebook, ranging from UI to availability of games and the network effect, but no, Google+ appeared at a moment in time when people where nervous about their online privacy and getting tired of Facebook and Google had one chance and totally blew it with their real name policy. But then it got worse, they forced YouTube users to migrate to a Google+ account and thus adopt the real name policy. I mean YouTube, their biggest online community. It has been a total clusterfuck and guess what, YouTube comments are still shitty, even with real names, because many people are in essence jerks and a real name policy isn't going to change that. I sometimes wonder if they were clueless about this, or knew it and did it anyway for advertising value. But lets rewind a little and remember that they killed Google Reader because of Google+. I'll never forget them for Google Reader, I'll never trust their free offerings again. If anything, their current attitude of backtracking from their Google+ push users-be-damned has been nothing but healthy.

dmix 10y ago
True, youtube comments are really bad. Not just in terms of content but the interactive experience. This could have been a good opportunity for Google to do something like Disqus did with cross-website identity. With a high-quality messaging UX. But no, Youtube still has second-rate commenting. Even a voting/ranking system closer to Reddit would be better.
- bnolsen 10y ago
  oh yeah! and g+ notifications do a super crappy job of putting you in a position to efficiently jump to the youtube thread and respond. a stupid tuny window, no good indication what to click on to get there, clicking on things takes you places you don't want to go. makes me want to break things.
imron 10y ago
> I really don't think they are in the second place. But maybe they could have been. Unfortunately, their desire not to be second place meant they did all sorts of user unfriendly things in order to rope users in to using the system and boost numbers. Abusing users' trust might work great for short term numbers, but it's bad for the long term.

Sylos 10y ago

I once heard somewhere that before Google+ became a social network, it was supposed to serve as a way for people to insert custom information into Google-searches about themselves. So, if you're for example someone famous, you could create a Google+-profile and put in your detailed information and then when people searched for your name, they'd see the information that you put in. No idea, if it's actually true, but it seems about right, especially also with the name and that Google replaced the plus-operator in Google searches to search through Google+.