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>And second, even if it were broken, Google has never fixed anything before. >Google never said “What you’re doing is broken. Use our thing instead.” They alway

by feral 15y ago

>And second, even if it were broken, Google has never fixed anything before. >Google never said “What you’re doing is broken. Use our thing instead.” They always said “Did you know you we can do that too, for free?” I don't agree. I think they saw search was broken, and then fixed it. I think they also basically 'fixed' webmail with GMail. The argument in this article seems spread pretty thin, to me.

temuze 15y ago
I agree - Google "fixed" search and webmail. I also think arguing that a company shouldn't do something because they haven't done it before is a little superficial.
bad_user 15y ago
I remember precisely the period when GMail was launched and I received an invitation from a friend. Until then I've been using private email servers with local clients + Yahoo's Mail. My first reaction to GMail was somewhere along the lines ... fuck, this is too good to be true. The same thing happened when I discovered their search engine. I've been using Altavista and I actually was late to the party. So here I was in an Internet Coffee, frustrated that both Altavista and Yahoo were giving me shitty results, then I saw somebody using Google and I tried it out. The results were visibly much, much better and the interface was fast, simple and effective. And I would tell the same story for Android right now, if it weren't for Apple's iOS that came first. The article completely misses the point of why Google is Google. They are engineers fixing things. Which is why I don't blame them for trying out their luck with Google+. The problem is indeed that they haven't fixed anything in Google+. What really worries me is that Google is losing their culture of tinkering, their playfulness. They will soon fail to capture new markets, to further innovate, then they'll become evil, using their amassed wealth and influence to crush competition and to break standards.
redwood 15y ago
I think they've totally hit the nail on the head. The problem with G+ is that the profile page and wall felt like blatant FB ripoffs so no one used them. Everything else in the Google space was and still is widely used. It's just that now Google has to embarrassingly acknowledged to its users that it tried to be FB, failed. Perhaps more importantly G+ has eroded user trust of Google because it made people come to grips with the amount of data Google has about them in a way they could before just not think about. And perhaps most importantly, Google has finite eng and user experience resources and instead of them being devoted to Google's many other products (many of which are not finished or ready for go-time with enterprise customers), they were sucked into the G+ black hole because it was the hot new thing. Too bad most of their work was in vain...

by feral 15y ago

temuze 15y ago

I agree - Google "fixed" search and webmail. I also think arguing that a company shouldn't do something because they haven't done it before is a little superficial.

bad_user 15y ago

I remember precisely the period when GMail was launched and I received an invitation from a friend. Until then I've been using private email servers with local clients + Yahoo's Mail. My first reaction to GMail was somewhere along the lines ... fuck, this is too good to be true. The same thing happened when I discovered their search engine. I've been using Altavista and I actually was late to the party. So here I was in an Internet Coffee, frustrated that both Altavista and Yahoo were giving me shitty results, then I saw somebody using Google and I tried it out. The results were visibly much, much better and the interface was fast, simple and effective. And I would tell the same story for Android right now, if it weren't for Apple's iOS that came first. The article completely misses the point of why Google is Google. They are engineers fixing things. Which is why I don't blame them for trying out their luck with Google+. The problem is indeed that they haven't fixed anything in Google+. What really worries me is that Google is losing their culture of tinkering, their playfulness. They will soon fail to capture new markets, to further innovate, then they'll become evil, using their amassed wealth and influence to crush competition and to break standards.

redwood 15y ago

I think they've totally hit the nail on the head. The problem with G+ is that the profile page and wall felt like blatant FB ripoffs so no one used them. Everything else in the Google space was and still is widely used. It's just that now Google has to embarrassingly acknowledged to its users that it tried to be FB, failed. Perhaps more importantly G+ has eroded user trust of Google because it made people come to grips with the amount of data Google has about them in a way they could before just not think about. And perhaps most importantly, Google has finite eng and user experience resources and instead of them being devoted to Google's many other products (many of which are not finished or ready for go-time with enterprise customers), they were sucked into the G+ black hole because it was the hot new thing. Too bad most of their work was in vain...