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I just finished listening to the first episode of "Acquired" on Google and it ended with Google pushing Google Plus into everything in an effort to compete with

by jdeibele 11mo ago

I just finished listening to the first episode of "Acquired" on Google and it ended with Google pushing Google Plus into everything in an effort to compete with Facebook in social networking. It really hampered all their other offerings. https://www.acquired.fm https://www.acquired.fm Acquired podcast does long (2 4-hour episodes on Google) episodes on various companies, mostly tech but recently Trader Joe's

kingkawn 11mo ago
Do they talk about Trader Joe’s illegal union busting and attempts to get the national labor relations board disbanded ?
- Rebelgecko 11mo ago
  You could probably ask an LLM to listen and answer this question
  - kingkawn 10mo ago
    Can’t risk taking runtime away from your life partner
taeric 11mo ago
The debacle that was Google Wave into Google Plus is... really hard to really come to terms with. I don't even know that Hubris is enough to explain how badly managed that time period was by them. Just so bad.
- dpark 11mo ago
  Wave was an interesting jumble of ideas that just didn’t bring a coherent answer for why anyone should use it. Google Plus was 100% hubris. “If we build our version of Facebook, it course everyone will flock to it.”
  - rkomorn 11mo ago
    I don't see Google Plus as hubris. I just think they saw a threat in Facebook and felt they had to try and build a competing product (and happened to have the time/money to invest). Doing nothing while a competitor gains steam would've been hubris.
    - dpark 11mo ago
      My read on the whole Google Plus thing was that they drastically underestimated the difficulty of convincing people to actually use it. They clearly had the expertise to build it, and they had some interesting ideas with their circles of friends or whatever they called them (though I think they missed the mark on how they used them). But they couldn’t convince anyone to actually use it. Maybe I’m wrong and internally they knew they had a major uphill battle, but I don’t think so. So many of the choices they made were needlessly user hostile (e.g. real name requirements) that it seems like they assumed it would be a given that people would want to use it. When they later realized their error they tried to cram it down everyone’s throats with stuff like YouTube comments only working from Google Plus accounts.
      - rkomorn 11mo ago
        > Maybe I’m wrong and internally they knew they had a major uphill battle, but I don’t think so. I think you're wrong with probably the same confidence you think you're not wrong. :) At most, I'd say they didn't expect it to be as hard as it proved to be. I totally agree that Google just didn't get it right, but all the things you describe, to me, fall under a mix of "they had to try", and "it was working for Facebook" (but also having to differentiate from Facebook at the same time, eg with circles). (Disclaimer, I guess) I was working for Facebook when the whole Google Plus thing happened, and Facebook definitely saw it as a serious threat. I don't at all recall Facebook folks laughing it off as Google hubris, more like it was a long shot, but Google wasn't to be ignored. Upvote for you regardless, because I think it's a solid take and an engaging comment.
  - taeric 11mo ago
    It was more than just "if we build our version of Facebook." It was, "if we kill off every other social like thing we have and force people into circles, we can build our own Facebook." Google Buzz, in particular, was a fairly well done integration with Google Reader and Google Mail. I legit had discussions about articles with close friends because of it. But, alas, no. Had to die because their social was supposed to be Plus. I'm trying to remember all of the crap integrations with the likes of Youtube that were pushed. Just, screw that stuff. And quit trying to make yet another new messenger app!
- devilbunny 11mo ago
  Google Wave... what an amazing piece of work just thrown in the trash. I never used any of its collaboration features, just looked at them. I did use it as a friendly-for-non-geeks version of IRC for a group of people that lived in three separate cities as a virtual watch party for LOST. And for that, it was spectacular even if it was painfully slow on a netbook (so was everything else, but it was cheap and light and worked).
  - thesuitonym 11mo ago
    Google Wave didn't just go away, it became Google Docs.
    - tadfisher 11mo ago
      Nope! Docs was an acquisition. Google Wave became Apache Wave, where software goes to die.
      - thesuitonym 11mo ago
        Sorry, I didn't mean it actually got renamed, just that all the collaboration junk that people did in Wave still can be done almost exactly the same in Google Docs, with the added benefit that people actually know what it is and how to use it.
  - jiggawatts 11mo ago
    The reason Google Wave failed so spectacularly was that Google's Marketing team insisted on copying the "invite only rollout" that was so successful for Google Mail. The thing is that a Google Mail early invitee could collaborate with everybody else via the pre-existing standard of SMTP email. They felt special because they got a new web UI, told their friends about it, generated hype, which then made the invites feel even more special, etc... Google Wave had no existing standard to leverage, making it 100.00% useless if you couldn't invite EVERYBODY you needed to collaborate with. But you couldn't! You weren't allowed! They had to wait for an invite. Days? Weeks? Months? Years!? Who knows! There was a snowball's chance in hell that this marketing approach could possibly work for a collaboration tool like Google Wave, but Google knew better. They knew better than every journalist that pointed this obvious flaw out. They knew better than every blog post, Slashdot commenter, etc... It was one of the most spectacular failures caused by self-important hubris that I've ever seen in any industry.
- marssaxman 11mo ago
  Google Plus launched between the time I interviewed at Google and the time I started work there, and that really took the shine off the whole thing.
- bambax 11mo ago
  Google Plus was insanely disastrous. And there was a guy, generally well respected, who was in charge of search I think? who went around advocating for Google Plus on forums, and people responding: if one needs Google Plus to find things, doesn't that mean that search is bad? But he didn't seem to make the connection, or he pretended not to.

kingkawn 11mo ago

Do they talk about Trader Joe’s illegal union busting and attempts to get the national labor relations board disbanded ?

Rebelgecko 11mo ago
You could probably ask an LLM to listen and answer this question
- kingkawn 10mo ago
  Can’t risk taking runtime away from your life partner

taeric 11mo ago

The debacle that was Google Wave into Google Plus is... really hard to really come to terms with. I don't even know that Hubris is enough to explain how badly managed that time period was by them. Just so bad.

dpark 11mo ago
Wave was an interesting jumble of ideas that just didn’t bring a coherent answer for why anyone should use it. Google Plus was 100% hubris. “If we build our version of Facebook, it course everyone will flock to it.”
- rkomorn 11mo ago
  I don't see Google Plus as hubris. I just think they saw a threat in Facebook and felt they had to try and build a competing product (and happened to have the time/money to invest). Doing nothing while a competitor gains steam would've been hubris.
  - dpark 11mo ago
    My read on the whole Google Plus thing was that they drastically underestimated the difficulty of convincing people to actually use it. They clearly had the expertise to build it, and they had some interesting ideas with their circles of friends or whatever they called them (though I think they missed the mark on how they used them). But they couldn’t convince anyone to actually use it. Maybe I’m wrong and internally they knew they had a major uphill battle, but I don’t think so. So many of the choices they made were needlessly user hostile (e.g. real name requirements) that it seems like they assumed it would be a given that people would want to use it. When they later realized their error they tried to cram it down everyone’s throats with stuff like YouTube comments only working from Google Plus accounts.
    - rkomorn 11mo ago
      > Maybe I’m wrong and internally they knew they had a major uphill battle, but I don’t think so. I think you're wrong with probably the same confidence you think you're not wrong. :) At most, I'd say they didn't expect it to be as hard as it proved to be. I totally agree that Google just didn't get it right, but all the things you describe, to me, fall under a mix of "they had to try", and "it was working for Facebook" (but also having to differentiate from Facebook at the same time, eg with circles). (Disclaimer, I guess) I was working for Facebook when the whole Google Plus thing happened, and Facebook definitely saw it as a serious threat. I don't at all recall Facebook folks laughing it off as Google hubris, more like it was a long shot, but Google wasn't to be ignored. Upvote for you regardless, because I think it's a solid take and an engaging comment.
- taeric 11mo ago
  It was more than just "if we build our version of Facebook." It was, "if we kill off every other social like thing we have and force people into circles, we can build our own Facebook." Google Buzz, in particular, was a fairly well done integration with Google Reader and Google Mail. I legit had discussions about articles with close friends because of it. But, alas, no. Had to die because their social was supposed to be Plus. I'm trying to remember all of the crap integrations with the likes of Youtube that were pushed. Just, screw that stuff. And quit trying to make yet another new messenger app!
devilbunny 11mo ago
Google Wave... what an amazing piece of work just thrown in the trash. I never used any of its collaboration features, just looked at them. I did use it as a friendly-for-non-geeks version of IRC for a group of people that lived in three separate cities as a virtual watch party for LOST. And for that, it was spectacular even if it was painfully slow on a netbook (so was everything else, but it was cheap and light and worked).
- thesuitonym 11mo ago
  Google Wave didn't just go away, it became Google Docs.
  - tadfisher 11mo ago
    Nope! Docs was an acquisition. Google Wave became Apache Wave, where software goes to die.
    - thesuitonym 11mo ago
      Sorry, I didn't mean it actually got renamed, just that all the collaboration junk that people did in Wave still can be done almost exactly the same in Google Docs, with the added benefit that people actually know what it is and how to use it.
- jiggawatts 11mo ago
  The reason Google Wave failed so spectacularly was that Google's Marketing team insisted on copying the "invite only rollout" that was so successful for Google Mail. The thing is that a Google Mail early invitee could collaborate with everybody else via the pre-existing standard of SMTP email. They felt special because they got a new web UI, told their friends about it, generated hype, which then made the invites feel even more special, etc... Google Wave had no existing standard to leverage, making it 100.00% useless if you couldn't invite EVERYBODY you needed to collaborate with. But you couldn't! You weren't allowed! They had to wait for an invite. Days? Weeks? Months? Years!? Who knows! There was a snowball's chance in hell that this marketing approach could possibly work for a collaboration tool like Google Wave, but Google knew better. They knew better than every journalist that pointed this obvious flaw out. They knew better than every blog post, Slashdot commenter, etc... It was one of the most spectacular failures caused by self-important hubris that I've ever seen in any industry.
marssaxman 11mo ago
Google Plus launched between the time I interviewed at Google and the time I started work there, and that really took the shine off the whole thing.
bambax 11mo ago
Google Plus was insanely disastrous. And there was a guy, generally well respected, who was in charge of search I think? who went around advocating for Google Plus on forums, and people responding: if one needs Google Plus to find things, doesn't that mean that search is bad? But he didn't seem to make the connection, or he pretended not to.