5 ms·
I say this not as an excuse, but as an explanation: these things are very, very hard to get right, and can be nearly impossible to retrofit onto existing system
by kcorbitt 10y ago
I say this not as an excuse, but as an explanation: these things are very, very hard to get right, and can be nearly impossible to retrofit onto existing systems. When every single one of your dozens (or at Google's scale probably hundreds) of interlocking backend systems designed at different periods by hundreds of different engineers were built on the assumption that one primary key == one account == one user, and you try to change those assumptions in anything more than a superficial way, it's a guaranteed multi-year project with a high chance of failure. Just look at the mess Microsoft is in with their accounts, also on the front page, as an example (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14159085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14159085).
And of course, once you're a certain size (that Google passed more than a decade ago), you pretty much lose the opportunity to ever start over from scratch on this sort of thing. You're dealing with legacy systems forever.
- hackpert 10y agoCouldn't agree more. A (somewhat large) company I worked with started working on this tech about three years ago, and still haven't gotten around to even coming close to launching it.
- rajathagasthya 10y agoCan you expand on why one primary key == one account == one user doesn't hold true when you want to provide support for multiple users? In case of Google Home, each user has their own Google account and the device decides which account to use based on who's asking. How is the one primary key == one account == one user concept changing here?
- MBCook 10y agoYou're right you can use completely different keys to access completely different account and it may not be that bad. But what happens when there's shared resources and none of your systems were designed for that? The idea that comes to the top of my head would be controlling lights and appliances in the house. You don't have two completely different sets of lights and appliances in one house just because there are two users, it's the same set of things for both. But that means now you have to know that both users are sharing X while some other thing (such as a Gmail calendar) may be individual to each user.
- Gaelan 10y agoCase in point: "to use this account with Drive, you must log out of all other accounts."