4 ms·
So I worked at Google when Google Plus rolled out. What was contentious at the time internally was the Real Names policy. This was all Vic Gundotra's doing. He
by cletus 7y ago
So I worked at Google when Google Plus rolled out. What was contentious at the time internally was the Real Names policy. This was all Vic Gundotra's doing. He routinely gave the example of not wanting to interact with someone called "Dog Turd".
I think we have ample evidence that people want pseudonymity. People like to segment parts of their lives without their prospective employer being able to look up what you said and possibly take things out of context. So as much as people outside complained, trust me there was a ton of internal dissent about this too. This was back before leaking for a political agenda became widespread in the Trump era.
Anyway, agree or disagree with the Real Names policy it presented a far larger problem. If some automated system decided your name was "fake" your entire account including Youtube, Gmail and so on got locked.
Whoever signed off on this was utterly insane and should've been fired. While we're at it, fire anybody who suggested it as being a good idea.
I remember looking for a photo storage solution for my sister at the time. Google Plus had unlimited storage but you had to "upgrade" your account to a Google Plus account. I, as a Google engineer, could not in good conscience recommend this approach because I had no idea what might trigger a global lock on her account.
Google Photos came from the wreckage of this shit show and is actually a good product. This happens when you start addressing user needs and concerns rather than trying to push your own agenda. What agenda? Google wanted a single account for everything where everyone was logged into search as this would allow search to be personalized (better). Or at least that was the theory. Larry talked a lot about the desire to get people signed in to Google search.
I'm utterly dependent on my Gmail address to the point where I probably won't use any future Google service just to diminish my risk of some new product triggering a global lockout, which as an ex-employee I now have limited ability to rectify.
Google should NEVER have taken the route of a global lock out. Trust is broken. So my chances of using this banking service is literally zero.
- gitgreen 7y agoYesterday I signed up for Proton mail to start splitting off my data from Google. The announcement that they are now vacuuming up health data without patient consent is unacceptable. Had Google made this announcement at the time of the Wells Fargo scandals they probably would've had my business but my trust in them is near zero at this point.
- wisty 7y ago> What was contentious at the time internally was the Real Names policy. This was all Vic Gundotra's doing. He routinely gave the example of not wanting to interact with someone called "Dog Turd". To me, this is stunning. IMO, Facebook beat MySpace because of their real name policy. However IMO this was because it enabled discoverability which got the network past a critical point. If I'm on a social network, I want to instantly know who friends and acquaintances are. Saying "real names are good because I don't want to talk to someone with a silly screen name" is a complete misunderstanding of the product. It's not about the personal preferences of power users, it's about casual users being able to use the network reasonably efficiently. Sure you can ask users to link accounts or whatever, that's part of the puzzle, but getting the network going is literally the problem you're trying to solve. Understanding how real names fit into the puzzle is pretty important. I'm not stunned that you disagree with real names. I'm stunned that (apparently) no-one tried to convince you why it was a good idea beyond the preference of some hypothetical power-user. As for global lock-outs ... yeah. Google isn't the only game in town, when it comes to email and data hosting. They're the only game in town when it comes to drunken comments on silly political videos (or my cat sitting on my keyboard as a livestream runs, or some accidental cut and paste error or whatever else will upset them). If I have to pick one, I'll keep watching Youtube and I'll take my serious business elsewhere, I hope Youtube is making a ton of money for them.
- hnick 7y ago> I'm utterly dependent on my Gmail address to the point where I probably won't use any future Google service just to diminish my risk of some new product triggering a global lockout, which as an ex-employee I now have limited ability to rectify. I've never thought of it that way. That's hilarious. Reading this whole thread has made me realise I really need to at least back up my ~15 years of gmail emails somewhere else. I don't care much about the rest but that would be a killer.
- raxxorrax 7y agoVery interesting. It is pretty much how many people imagined it to have taken place. > Larry talked a lot about the desire to get people signed in to Google search. I don't do that and still use the search engine from time to time. It is really annoying, since you have no control about settings, that could very well be controlled by a cookie. Google just plainly started putting business interest above user interest. I even doubt the intention of wanting to provide a better service. Or at least not for the "customers" that visit the page to search. The intention was pretty transparent from the start. And there is a reason this intent is probably only communicated internally. I think the problem with Google is mainly the leadership, which changed profoundly with the success of Google in my opinion. Almost as if they don't even know why they were successful in the first place.