20 ms·

You know, Google, the web already had this feature

• mthoms 14y ago
  Nitpick: the extension would not need to send every URL visited to Google. Just the ones where it detects a G+ widget. And by serving you the widget in the first place Google already knows that you've visited that page. (Unless I misunderstand what the extension actually does)
  • emiliobumachar 14y ago
    It's much like facebook's "like" button. It informs fb you've visited the page even if you don't click it.
• kunai 14y ago
  Google has overstayed the web's welcome. What started out as a quirky, innovative company that bucked all of the suit-and-tie trends (see Microsoft, HP, even Apple in some regards) of Silicon Valley, has now turned into a monstrous calamity with no regard for its users. Up until 2009, it was breezy and beautiful, but right now, at this moment, it's a different story altogether. Don't be evil? Pfeh. The only thing left of Google that they haven't managed to screw up or cause outrage over is search. The only thing they can't afford to change, for fear people will stop using it. This harkens back far before Google, far before any company dared invest in the Internet. This type of corporate mentality is one we see often, but tend to forget quickly. Apple did it in the 1990s. Microsoft is doing it now; look at Windows 8. Any corporation that strays too far from its roots with fail. Not in a fiscal sense, but in an ethical sense, and that's the worst type of failure there is. Do I hope they get their shit together and start being Google again? Of course. They could start by fixing YouTube, exhuming Google Reader, and rethinking the decision to end iGoogle. And please, PLEASE, reinvent that horrid thing called Google+. Even the name sucks.
  • mindcrime 14y ago
    I actually kinda like G+, BUT... I agree with the author of TFA about Google and their move away from the Open Web and towards another walled garden. If I could subscribe to RSS feeds to populate my G+ streams, and post to G+ using AtomPub, and expose my social-graph from G+ using FOAF, consume G+ using RSS/Atom, etc., then I would have no problem with it. But right now, Google seem determined to build something that's just one more walled garden, albeit one with a gate[1] that you can laboriously, manually, tediously drag your "stuff" out through. [1]: http://www.google.com/takeout http://www.google.com/takeout
  • gkoberger 14y ago
    Overstayed the web's welcome? I'm not convinced that's happened yet. I certainly don't disagree with your points, but it's moot. Normal users don't care about things like "privacy" or "neutrality" or "standards". If it works and is free, that's good enough. And the page views Google gets is testament to the fact that nobody outside of the HN-esque world has any issues with Google. Heck, I (and most people here) use GMail+Search+Docs+etc for the same reasons "normal" people do.. the privacy I give up is worth the convenience of their products.
    • mindcrime 14y ago
      ... nobody outside of the HN-esque world has any issues with Google. Until they do. And that's the rub. Even non-hackers often eventually get burned by these issues, but they aren't usually thinking about any of this stuff in advance. They lack awareness. What that tells me is that we need to find a way to do a better of educating people on the importance of things like "privacy" or "neutrality" or "standards". How best to do that is, of course, an open question...
    • mnicole 14y ago
      > nobody outside of the HN-esque world has any issues with Google. People say the same thing about non-technical people using Facebook, but it isn't all that truthful. They have legitimate concerns, they're just waiting on the internet-at-large to determine the next best thing before expending any energy on making the switch.
    • _delirium 14y ago
      That's part of what makes this strategy a bit strange, because "normal" users don't care about or use Google+ either.
    • ianstormtaylor 14y ago
      > Normal users don't care about things like "privacy" ... This is not true. If you explained exactly what the extension was doing to a normal user I can almost guarantee they wouldn't like it. No one wants every website they visit to be looked at by an external source. The problem is it's not obvious this is happening. Hell, I'm a web developer and even I wouldn't have thought twice about how Google was displaying this information to me. The technology has gotten so far outside of a "normal users"'s grasp that it's not even fair anymore. They care about privacy, they just have no way of knowing each and every way their privacy can be eroded. Luckily no one uses Google+ so the extension is pretty useless...
  • InclinedPlane 14y ago
    The biggest problem with Google has been that they've been a "benevolent monarch", more or less. Meaning, much of the reason why google has been good for the web has been due to specific choices that google leadership has made and the ways that google has chosen to wield its power. This contrasts to strict limits on power and strong external forces from competition, etc. As long as the monarch is benevolent this is great, but then there's no mechanism to prevent abuses of power, and then maybe the monarch changes, or circumstances change, and the inevitable happens. Google is making more money than ever, but that's still not enough for them. And now we're starting to see a lot of the "well, we chose not to be evil" slip away. The problem with "don't be evil" is that it's weak, and it's a double negative. Contrast it with "be good". Neutral isn't evil[1], and once you're down in the moral gray area pit anyway it's easy to move the goal posts and define "evil" differently. One could make a very well-founded argument, for example, that Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, and even EA or Comcast are not, strictly speaking, "evil" companies. [1: what makes a man turn neutral?]
    • slg 14y ago
      Since you raised the issue, how exactly is a for profit and publicly owned company supposed to run effectively if not through a (benevolent or not) monarchy? Do you expect Google to put product decisions up for a vote?
      • InclinedPlane 14y ago
        I think you misunderstand. This isn't about actions, it's about power. Google is in a bit of an unusual position because it has a shit-load of power that it, mostly, hasn't abused for its own advantage, yet. Partly because google has been "good" many people haven't been overly concerned about their power and they haven't sought to try to limit that power (in all of the typical ways power is usually limited in the business world, through regulation, through competition, etc.) But on the flip side that means that there are very few roadblocks to google deciding all of a sudden to try to convert its power into cold hard cash, regardless of how it hurts individuals. Which may be something that could happen in the near future.
    • r00fus 14y ago
  • kaoD 14y ago
    What I specially hate about Google+ is the fact that Google can't stop spamming me to join it. Now even Google Play comments need to be part of Google+. You know what, Google? Fuck you. No. Fuck you twice. I won't join that fucking horrid place. I don't even have Facebook, why would I join a crappy social network?
    • anigbrowl 14y ago
      You know, I don't really like Google+ but I have had no difficulty in opting out of it and declining to share things like my YouTube favorites and so forth (with a few exceptions that were wholly by choice). I'm not happy with their social strategy in general, but I don't feel it's anything like as burdensome on the user as Facebook's, which caused me to stop using that service altogether.
      • ajanuary 14y ago
        They really do push you to at least create an account though. I've accidentally created and had to close an account several times. I've given up and just left an open but dormant account now.
      • kaoD 14y ago
        Well, I've had difficulty opting out, and new Google accounts are linked to Google+ by default. E.g.: I have an Android phone and I would like to rate a scam app so people don't download it. Oops, it's not possible without a Google+ account. See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5535556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5535556
        • knightzero 14y ago
          Google is trying to consolidate all of their services under one account. Like it or not a Google+ is just public facing page for a Google account. In away it dose make sense and answers an age old internet problem. It requires users to be responsible for what they put online.
  • NewAccnt 14y ago
    Google, has no obligation to support Reader. What they did to the RSS market was shady, indeed, but it is well within their rights and they did not do anything that would infringe on the rights of developers or users the way Apple does. Nobody has a right to make a profitable RSS service, and nobody can tell them they have to support RSS in place of their social network of choice Apple on the otherhand enforces a single marketplace on their operating system today. Microsoft has mostly learned from their past mistakes and people watch their every move and jump on them if any technology they use can be used to subvert freedom of developers or users down the line. I don't have any dog in this race, but I don't understand why Apple continues to get a free pass to implement market control mascaraing in the name of clean interfaces with comforting whitespace and unified design, especially when it is used regularly to usurp users' and developers' rights. This article is nothing but platitudes and entitlement. Somehow people got in their minds that they have a right to Google Search and can demand features and support from them.. I have no idea how this idea came about, but it seems that the gist of it is that we've come to expect everything for free from Google and that's just how it should always be.
    • doktrin 14y ago
      I understand where you're coming from, but I don't think any criticism of Google automatically translates into tacit support of Apple. They [Apple] certainly have their warts, but this isn't about them at all. For my part, I share many of the frustrations voiced here. I can't stand Google's persistence in ensuring I'm constantly logged in, or Chrome's ever helpful reminder that I should sync it with my Google account. The business case is obvious, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. In fact, I dislike it enough to no longer use Chrome as my default browser and have moved away from all of their services with the exception of Gmail. I don't take my privacy as seriously as some here, but it's easily gotten to the point that I no longer feel comfortable trusting Google with the entirety of my online experience. For what it's worth, my bar [for not-trusting-companies] is set relatively high, and Google has absolutely begun clearing it, unfortunately.
      • NewAccnt 14y ago
        It is support for Apple with the OP casually mentions Apple as being somehow better than Microsoft today then vaguely points to Windows 8 as if there were anything especially wrong with it from a moral point of view. IMHO, My post is more on topic than the OPs because I actually address the Google situation where the OP is just shallow insinuation and emotional appeal directed at Google. I have yet to see any proof that Google has done anything shady with the information they collect from users that isn't mandated by law, while that is not true of Apple. That's probably the reason that people continue to trust them with their data while people trust Apple simply because it is trendy or easy.
  • DanBC 14y ago
    What do they need to do to fix YouTube? (I'm really asking. I think some of it is broken, and maybe people can pass information onto YouTube people.) 1) Default to 240: I want to be able to always watch videos in the worst resolution possible. I want the lightest bandwidth possible. I'd sometimes be happy with just the audio. It seems that I can't default to 240, no matter what I click. 2) Small elements in UI: There is a teeny little grey drop-down arrow at the top of the Subscriptions list. I didn't see that for weeks, and the randomly changing order of the subscriptions menu drove me bonkers. Making that arrow bigger would be good. 3) Default to Uploads only: When I click a name in the subscriptions list I want to see the videos they've uploaded. I probably don't care about other videos they've liked. And if I do I can clicky the menu. Making me clicky the menu for something I do every time is sub-optimal. 4) Please god something for comments: Google and YouTube are full of smart people. Some kind of "poor comment quality" filter should be easy to implement. Allow youtubers to have no comments; full comments; or 'no poor comments'. (Maybe with a 1, 2, or 3 level setting). This would stop people posting "FIRST!!" and then getting into flamebaiting over it. It could stop some of the vile juvenile language use. (Seriously, I can string all those words together, but I can't show a nipple?) It's not a cure for poor comments, but it could help. I don't know what iGoogle is. Seriously, I think I'm signed into it. Or maybe I signed out when I found out it was going. I'm not quite sure where you're going with the MS thing. For years they've had "sweet spot" OSs. MSDOS 3.3 was good; MSDOS 6 was good. Win 3.11 for workgroups was good while the other win 3.1s were bad. Windows 98SE with plus pack (is that right?) was good, while all the others were okay. Windows 2000 was god tier. Windows ME was a crime.
    • doktrin 14y ago
      > Google and YouTube are full of smart people. Some kind of "poor comment quality" filter should be easy to implement. This touches on something I actually feel deserves a second look, if only from an academic or sociological perspective. I have never quite understood why Youtube appears to be the single largest (or, at least most prominent) internet cesspool. Comments there are routinely among the most vile I've seen anywhere, and I've never been able to rationalize a suitable explanation.
      • 14y ago
  • lawdawg 14y ago
    I must have missed all of this outrage over Android, Chrome, GMail, Docs + Drive, Adwords, Analytics, etc, etc. To be honest, I'm really glad Google finally pulled the plug on Reader instead of letting it rot to death. It's opened up the market for companies who will really focus on it. The same with iGoogle, which will be replaced by a much better "Google Now"-ish product.
    • GFischer 14y ago
      Maybe you missed it, but searching here in Hacker News, you'll find it creeping along. PLENTY of complaints In my personal case: Android - bugs that stay open for years (my own post from a year ago is unresolved, and it affects all Spanish-speaking Android users https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4532596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4532596 ) Chrome: other than it displaying advertising, I haven't heard much bad about Chrome https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5218153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5218153 GMail: if you have a problem with GMail, you're SCREWED. My mother still hasn't got her account back, and mine was hacked some time ago (I now have 2-factor auth, which still has some bugs - for example someone reported a bug with Android auth even if you revoke the keys) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3839726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3839726 Adwords: don't get me started. The rules for an Adwords account are really opaque. I think there's a post on the frontpage right now. Ahh, here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5523992 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5523992 I've had my run-ins with Adwords too. While I still depend way too much on my GMail account, I have my personal email somewhere else, and I won't consider it for business use (and they probably are going to lose millions of dollars because of that). There's still not a strong challenger to AdWords, but I'll definitely look forward to it. Even Google search is starting to degrade somewhat, it's still not Altavista-level. To be fair, Google still produces some amazing products which they give away for free, but they generate a lot of ill will by not giving even paid support.
      • wilfra 14y ago
        tl;dr 'i'm mad and can name at least one thing i don't like about every Google product' one could make a similar list about every popular product - online or offline. nothing pleases everybody all the time at scale.
  • BHSPitMonkey 14y ago
    You think they haven't caused outrage in the Search space? The DuckDuckGo people would like to have a word with you. As for Google+, aside from the ever-increasing pervasive integrations with other Google properties, I actually do like the product itself. They've made sense of choosing who you share individual items with (Facebook still hasn't done this), it combines the "friend" and "follower" models nicely (it's quite nice reading posts from people like Linus there), the photo albums are very nicely presented and high in quality, and Hangouts are unmatched IMO. If I knew anyone else who used it, I would participate there more...
  • vacri 14y ago
    Maps? Gmail? Youtube? All these are screwed up? Compared to whom? Driverless cars? Android? Streetview? Damn I am tired of people unhappy with one product line using it to damn the entire company.
    • kyllo 14y ago
      I dislike how they are playing fast and loose with my personal information and seem to be building their own "walled garden" on the internet by sabotaging open standards like RSS. But if they get everyone to ride in self-driving cars I will forgive them forever. I cannot exaggerate how excited I am about that, it will completely reshape American society.
      • tomkarlo 14y ago
        How, in any way, did they "sabotage open standards like RSS"? That's a pretty broad statement to throw out there - that Google is somehow undermining the open standards process. I'd argue it's done better than other companies, including Apple and Microsoft, in supporting open standards.
        • lxst 14y ago
          One example would be Calendar. First they announce that they retire EAS for CalDav. A few month later they announce that CalDAV will be deprecated and only available for selected developers and other services should use the proprietary Google calendar API. Which is kinda sad as Google could have really improved CalDAV with their move. Now it is back to "walled garden".
          • tomkarlo 14y ago
            While I think that pattern sucks, I'm not sure that "not supporting" a standard constitutes "sabotaging" it. There's a big gap between "promoting" and "destroying/undermining", it's not either-or. Saying Google "sabotaged" a standard implies that they somehow made it unusable for everyone.
  • flaktrak 14y ago
    killed all my Google accounts. Can't stand G+ at least with FB most of the people who have accounts wanted the account. G+ most people don't even want the stupid thing.
  • blantonl 14y ago
    Don't be evil? Pfeh. Google is a publicly traded company (Stock Ticker: NASDAQ: GOOG) The demands of the shareholders and board of directors outweighs the expectations of Google's users and business partners.
    • kunai 14y ago
      That has not stopped Apple. Going public does not mean you abandon the ideals your company was founded on.
    • Shank 14y ago
      The "Don't be evil" motto was created out of the fact that at the time, other search engines were taking money to show ads higher on the page in search results, without being marked. The methodology is essentially the same as being transparent in how they've executed on that. They're a business, they'll do what's healthy for that business to do. At the same time, however, they're more open and transparent than most Internet companies with what they're doing with data and what they hope to achieve. I'm tired of people denouncing Google+ as some sort of crazed attempt at creating a Facebook competitor, when Google repeatedly has to clarify that it is simply Google's social fabric. Stream is a competitor to newsfeed, but +1s are displayed in search results (Search Plus Your World), and other recommendation data is spread about Google too. It's primary goal creates a unified identity across all Google services. If Google were truly being "evil," they'd automatically turn on Google+ for everybody and provide no opt out or no way to leave. They haven't. You can still "downgrade" and remove Google+.
  • blhack 14y ago
    >Google has overstayed the web's welcome. Then stop using their products. Switch to bing, switch to Internet Explorer, get an iPhone and shut up about it. No, google has not "overstayed the web's welcome", google has overstayed the welcome of a few entitled silicon valley golddiggers who will continue feeling wronged for the next 10 minutes until they realize what wonderful things google has created in the world for them to use.
    • flyinRyan 14y ago
      >what wonderful things google has created in the world for them to use. Like.... search? That's all they made that I used. Every other product of theirs I used wasn't theirs when I started using it. They bought it and often fucked it up. In another post you go on about how we should be so excited by google cars and google glass. I am excited such things have been made but I'm very disappointed that they come from google. If I ride in a google car am I going to get to recover that wasted travel time by reading a book or working on my laptop? Or will I be unable to do anything because some shitty ad is blasted at me the whole way (or, worse, at regular annoying intervals)? Same thing with google glass, this could add so much but will it? Or is this going to end up as a way for google to blast more shitty ads at me?
    • kunai 14y ago
      > Then stop using their products. Switch to bing, switch to Internet Explorer, get an iPhone and shut up about it. I use Yahoo (flame me all you want), I use Firefox, and I do own an iPhone. But I am not going to shut up about it, because Google is forcing me away even though they're the best at what they do. I hate them because I care.
      • 3825 14y ago
        >I hate them because I care. I am sorry but I can't understand your rationale. Please elaborate? What do you care about and what do you hate? Do you care about Google as a publicly shared company and hate the lack of focus in the growing company? Do you care about the web and hate the growth of walled gardens? >Google is forcing me away even though they're the best at what they do What specifically bothers you? If there is one thing I have learned from the Internet, it is that I am never first and I am never unique. Perhaps, someone else has found workarounds for the problems you face? I don't know why anyone would choose to use Y! Search but Firefox is a great web browser and the iPhone is a great app phone (not that you needed my validation). In any case, wish you all the best. :)
  • chipsy 14y ago
    I guess it won't be long now before we start coming up with the "Evil Empire" and "Borg" comparisons for Google. No tech monopoly seems to be immune...
  • mythz 14y ago
    Google, more than any other company, has made the web a better place. The web was horrible dumping ground before Google - laced with Portals and flashing display ads, pathetic Search, fragmented content. Chrome's the best browser, Gmail the best Email client, Google Maps / Earth the best mapping client, there's only 1 YouTube, the Mobile landscape would be a walled garden with every user a hostage if it wasn't for Android, then there's a zillion other apps I use on a daily basis that is best-in-class like Hangouts, Analytics, Google G+ Communities, Groups, etc - and I use them all for free. The world needs more Google's not less, the web is a much better place for having them.
    • MatthewPhillips 14y ago
      I disagree, the web of the 90s was really awesome. I remember one of the first things I did when I got online was look up Star Wars websites (using Webcrawler). There were dozens of sites, all made by fans, all amateur, all full of cheesy graphics, .wav sounds, but all unique. Here's the Google results for "Star wars". Tell me when you get to a result that wasn't created by a corporation: https://www.google.com/q=star+wars https://www.google.com/q=star+wars
      • notatoad 14y ago
        The web of the 90s was an awesome exclusive subculture. The web google has been promoting is inclusive and egalitarian. It isn't just for nerds, and cares about things other than Star Wars.
        • ori_b 14y ago
          I think the word you're looking for is "corporate". It's not google's fault, of course. It's just the way the world works when money is involved. Large organizations that stood to make a profit were going to change it significantly to raise their margins, no matter what. The web of the 1990s was far more open to participation outside of the walled gardens. It may have been more difficult to get started with, but it was definitely more inclusive.
  • cageface 14y ago
    Overall I am a big fan of Google and admire their ability to create products that are not only technically superior but fairly open for most useful definitions of that term. But Google+ is a poison spreading through the rest of the business. Their ridiculous, disingenuous defense of their real name policy was the first thing they did that made me second guess my reliance on their services. Their agenda of shoving it down everyone's throat on the back of their other services seems sinister.
  • OGinparadise 14y ago
    Don't be evil? Pfeh. The only thing left of Google that they haven't managed to screw up or cause outrage over is search. The only thing they can't afford to change, for fear people will stop using it. Search is gone too, virtually all ads: http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/google-search-ads-600x486.jpg http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/google-sear... http://www.click-conversion.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/google-products-ads.png http://www.click-conversion.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/g...
    • city41 14y ago
      Your two examples are "get credit card" and "Nike shoes on sale"? Try "geomorphology" or "big o notation" or anything not consumer related. Quite frankly if I searched for "Nike shoes on sale" then those ads are exactly what I'd want to see.
      • OGinparadise 14y ago
        in related news....my point was not that they are ads but that ads are probably 90% of the page. To the unsuspecting user, those seem like unbiased results (not as ads) and to everyone they start the "Google tax" price increase for everyone. Try "geomorphology" or "big o notation" Go and buy those keywords and see what happens. Google posts ad for bought keywords and that usually includes every commercial word. If the defense is that not sure if you're helping them.
  • PavlovsCat 14y ago
    And please, PLEASE, reinvent that horrid thing called Google+. Even the name sucks. How about Doubleplusgoogle? Or maybe MeinGoogle?
  • mtreis86 14y ago
    Google's search has changed. At one point the searches you and I perform would have returned the same results. Now, even without being logged it, we get differing results. This can be both good and bad depending on your view but it certainly has changed.
  • euroclydon 14y ago
    >The only thing left of Google that they haven't managed to screw up or cause outrage over is search. Really? They're on the verge of it. The way they load search results as their auto-complete hones in, breaks browser history.
• yanw 14y ago
  So don't install the extension then. Who are these low karma users who keep submitting these Google bashing/feigned indignation posts?!
  • jtdaugh 14y ago
    this
  • rquantz 14y ago
    I don't think the indignation is feigned.
  • Steko 14y ago
    "So don't install the extension then." So if a crack house opens up in your neighborhood the proper response is not invite them to the barbecue? Shouldn't we also use our voices to call attention to things we want changed? "Who are these low karma users who keep submitting these Google bashing/feigned indignation post?!" If you think HN is a haven for Google bashing you are hilariously off base.
    • yanw 14y ago
      How is that analogy valid?! why install a browser extension when you're not interested in its functionality?
      • Steko 14y ago
        Because he talks about more than just this browser extension. Spoilers, I read to the end: My personal stream was my RSS feed, you want me to replace it with a Google+ profile. My news aggregator was the RSS aggregator of my choice, you want me to use a semi-read-only version called Google+. My browser would auto-discover the stream related to any page I visited and would allow me to subscribe to it, now you want me to use a Google+ chrome plugin which in addition kills my privacy. Everyting worked quite well, and you could pick our side and help us make it better -that’s what you’d do back in the “don’t be evil” days. Oh, right, I forgot: You killed RSS auto-discovery in chrome, Google reader is dead, and Feedburner is a living dead. I get it.
• ChuckMcM 14y ago
  I feel the author's pain. I don't hold it against Google for looking at the way RSS is (was?) used and re-implementing it in a way that they can more easily make money off it, while simultaneously removing any traction they are offering for the old non monetizable way of doing things. They are a business after all and no amount of money in the bank is enough [1]. But I find the whining a bit distracting since the same thing that made RSS in the first place is still out there. There is no "patent" on aggregating RSS feeds or creating a more durable (and by that I mean self sustainable) service which has the same capability. My advice is don't look at this as a loss, look at this as an opportunity. Rarely does the invading army come back to revisit the burned out village they have left behind. It is dead to them, so it is a uniquely safe place to avoid their future gaze. [1] I asked Eric Schmidt at one of the TGIF (friday) meetings why taking the $30M/year they spent on bottled water and putting it into their bank account made sense. His answer was that there were a lot of unknowns facing Google and the only insurance they had for dealing with them was to have a lot of capital. There is always something that could happen, that you might have prevented if you had just a bit more money. And sliding rapidly down that slope as early as 2007 (when I asked my question) it continues to be the goto answer to this day.
  • mapgrep 14y ago
    >"There is no "patent" on... creating a more durable (and by that I mean self sustainable) service which has the same capability." I'd love to hear why you believe going from a decentralized open shared system like RSS to a centralized proprietary system controlled by one corporation (Google+) is even conceivably more "durable." I'd bet $100 that Google+ sharing will be dead and buried long before RSS goes anywhere.
    • endlessvoid94 14y ago
      I trust google to build good infrastructure more than I trust the collective developer community. That's one reason -- whatever they build will be more robust, flexible, and extensible. And immediately adopted by hundreds of millions of people automatically. I guess that's not the same as "durable", but playing devil's advocate, those seem like good reasons to me.
• angryasian 14y ago
  lets all stop with all the fear mongering. Do you guys really believe that every time a site loads a facebook or twitter widget they aren't tracking you either. I can name 1000 other trackers that sites actually do install and that do genuinely sell your information. There are a handful of widgets that do the same thing for twitter and facebook so lets just stop the bs.
  • jodrellblank 14y ago
    "Because Facebook tracks you, mentioning Google's tracking is fearmongering bs". I don't follow your argument. I do, however, follow the like-button-blocker ShareMeNot https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/sharemenot/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/sharemenot/ http://sharemenot.cs.washington.edu/ http://sharemenot.cs.washington.edu/
    • angryasian 14y ago
      it is fear mongering because the entire point of the article is to point out another widget/tracker, when its absolutely nothing new. Event their +1 button probably does the same thing. So the author wants to obviously use googles name to get more page views when this is nothing new and has been done for years by facebook and twitter.
      • jodrellblank 14y ago
        But that's not the point. The point is claiming that Google took one existing open thing (RSS), killed it off, and replaced it with a Google-proprietary alternative. The spying agitating part is just side-complaining.
        • angryasian 14y ago
          What are you talking about rss is not killed off, ask the feedly team rss is still alive and well. Point me to any site and I will show you their rss feed. The reality is most sites aggregate their content using twitter, rss, facebook.. so they are encouraging you to aggregate it in the same way. Really we have an issue with that.
• endlessvoid94 14y ago
  Waiting around for people to embed metadata in their webpages is a terrible business strategy. This is way better for google than something like an embedded RSS feed. This lets google generate the equivalent automatically, without webmasters needing to do anything. Yes, this occurs at the expense of other things (annoying developers). But that's the reason.
• felipebueno 14y ago
  I used to be a Google fan as well. Not a BIG fan but a fan. In late 2010 I decided it was time to move on from Google. It took a while but I already went back to Firefox (nightly), started moving my emails to fasmail.fm (with my own domain so I'm not tied to anyone), I'm trying to use only DuckDuckGo (it's difficult... I have to admit that Google is unbeatable yet), stopped using google+ and Google Reader (since 2011), avoiding Google Talk, Analytics and Web Master Tools, etc. I think I'll make it to the end of this year. They are evil.
  • lawdawg 14y ago
    Is this the tech version of Poe's Law? Or is it the new version of tin-foil-hatism? You guys have a very, very strange definition of "evil". Google may not be perfect, and sure they deserve some harsh criticism and mocking from time to time for their choice of unofficial motto, but come on people, get a grip.
    • myko 14y ago
      I think felipebueno was being sarcastic, just did a poor job of getting that across. It doesn't look like a serious comment to me.
      • felipebueno 14y ago
        Yeah, it was a (poor) joke =P. But I really don't like Google anymore and I'm going to avoid their stuff.
    • felipebueno 14y ago
      I know, I know, the "evil" thing was a bit exaggerated. I know they are a big corp (like Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, etc) and need to make (big) money (no matter what it takes) to maintain it's infrastructure. I just don't like that and that's just my opinion.
  • mehrzad 14y ago
    Try !sp in DDG.
• DanBC 14y ago
  Honestly: Google isn't that bad. This article mentions a few things, and specifically mentions Google. But really many other companies and websites are doing similar things. I've been railing against anything other than pure HTML, CSS, and perhaps Javascript for years. I've obviously lost that argument a long time ago. But it's not Google who killed that model of the web. If anything Google is helping by helping to kill Flash. Sites have been blocking based on browser type for years. They've even used sneaky tricks to avoid users changing the agentid string. (https://groups.google.com/group/alt.sysadmin.recovery/msg/7e6d6a94db0c84bb https://groups.google.com/group/alt.sysadmin.recovery/msg/7e...) - that website (the Argos website) worked perfectly well in Opera.
  • Periodic 14y ago
    I noticed a decent number of sites ditching RSS because it was too hard to monetize. RSS feeds were fairly low interaction. You read the article, you go to the next, you're done with them. This means you're not going to their site and getting the ad impressions, seeing the related links, noticing the comments, etc. I personally think that an HTTP meta tag would be the right way to link to a G+ page. And heck, this is a browser extension, so I don't even have to install it if I don't want it. But it's not like this is a nefarious plot by Google to destroy the web as we know it.
  • jacquesm 14y ago
    > But really many other companies and websites are doing similar things. That does not count though. Good or bad operates on a scale that is independent of what the norm is, it simply means there is better and worse. But on an absolute scale all the players could easily be bad.
• bpatrianakos 14y ago
  The author is reaching here. Us nerds need to remember the web isn't just for us, at least not for B2C businesses. Google isn't doing this to squash competing technologies and take over the web... on purpose. What's going on is that only nerds like us give a damn about RSS. Everyone else wants to just point and click around and have stuff work. Google+ and some pointing and clicking around = a lot of happy normal people. Seriously, meta tags? Again, who's gonna do that except me and everyone else in this thread? Techie folks like us tend to really overestimate our importance and how many of us there are. There's a lot but we're nothing compared non-technical folks. Google isn't for us. It's for your parents. But that's alright because there's a whole world wide web out there without Google and Google really can't do much to actually kill any technology. RSS exists guys, there's just no Google Reader anymore. The cool thing is that if you actually care about this stuff then you're probably in a position to know how to build it. Google caters to those who don't know or care to build stuff. Why would you blame a company for catering to its customers?
• Shooti 14y ago
  Given its a extension for universal access to the G+ notification count, people who go out of there way to install this and keep it have not only bought into the notion of the G+ stream, but like it enough that they want more convenient access to it. With this as a premise, an optional feature inside an already optional extension to scope out more content for the stream just seems to be a logical extension for the enthusiasts who use it. Even supposing the only content on the G+ page was exact reshares of articles, it isn't an exact 1-to-1 match with an RSS subscription since it also augments the users search results, populates contact details into the Android People app/address book as well as any other integrations they add to circles. I don't really get the significance of the article, though maybe it's because I've (mostly) got over my Reader mourning phase.
• yanw 14y ago
  Chrome never implemented RSS auto discovery. Everyone else has a "walled garden" why must Google be different? and why should they - arguably the least “walled” of said gardens - suffer the "openness" brunt? The fact that they are not investing in RSS tools doesn't mean they're against them, it's just not in their interest anymore, and so I come to the conclusion that this is yet another Google Reader lament, and I thought we've already had our fill of these on the HN front page. It’s the same discussion all over again, If you've not found a Reader replacement by now, or at least had your eyes on a couple of replacement candidates then you're just being stubborn. Google lets you export your feeds and that is why they are not "evil", not because they refuse to indefinitely maintain a service that isn't of interest to them. Also the crux or that post is an opt in feature that you have to install as a browser extension, if you don't like it then avoid the extension, but then how is it any different than Facebook's 'like' buttons or any of the other social widgets that are cluttering the web?!
  • ianstormtaylor 14y ago
    It's not different, but what the article should have made you realize is how broken (or, if not broken, just fucked up) the system is if the average user (and even higher-than-average users) don't realize how all of these little pieces of the web are eroding their privacy.
  • jmillikin 14y ago
    > Chrome never implemented RSS auto discovery. Chrome has an official extension for RSS auto-discovery: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rss-subscription-extensio/nlbjncdgjeocebhnmkbbbdekmmmcbfjd?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rss-subscription-e... The Chrome team argues that not enough people use RSS to justify having an icon in the URL bar by default. I personally think this is somewhat circular reasoning ("People don't use RSS, so we won't show an icon letting them know about RSS"), but sadly other browsers such as Firefox have followed their lead and removed RSS notifications by default. Also, whether or not the browser implements native RSS auto-discovery is irrelevant to the point of the article. The Chrome extension in the article could be easily implemented by checking for a special <link> element, so that no URLs need to be sent back to Google just to know that the page is Plus-enabled. However, off the top of my head, there's a good reason why this wouldn't do much good. The advertised functionality of the Google+ extension requires details about the Google+ stream that the page links to. If the extension checked for a <link>, it would still need to send the URL in that link to Google to get those stream details. The privacy improvement seems marginal. In the end, I think this complaint is better served by declaring that the URLs aren't recorded. Google's DNS and Omnibox already have similar declarations, so it wouldn't be unprecedented.
• bitwize 14y ago
  It's the 2013 version of Netscape's "What's New" and "What's Cool" buttons. Holy shit, nothing HAS changed. It just has a different skin on it.
  • sesqu 14y ago
    What did those buttons do? I was always curious, but not curious enough to press them.
    • bitwize 14y ago
      They took you to pages of interesting web links curated by Netscape, on their servers. The URLs were hardcoded into the binary.
      • sesqu 14y ago
        How curious. thanks.
• umsm 14y ago
  I don't know if people know this or not, but all of these "social" features invade our privacy without us having to install an extension. The social javascript embedded into the web page automatically communicates with each service it's from.
• BenoitEssiambre 14y ago
  I have always been somewhat of a Google fanboy except for a few misgivings about their worrisome breadth of infiltration into people's live and things like the iGoogle shutdown but the Reader situation has been a huge slap in the face that made me lose a lot of faith in them. There is a huge war between Facebook and Google for global control of the most popular social graph and as much as I like Zuckerberg as a person, I was rooting for G+ for its streamlined interface and perceived lesser level of evil. Now I'm not so sure. I think there should be a third option in the form of a decentralized social protocol. I think there is market for a "social rss" where you could choose amongst a number for providers, "Google Readers" for social if you will, that could connect to each other. That way people could choose their frontend and the way they consume their friends social feeds. This would open competition and give people choices of different user interfaces, layouts and themes. For public posts the implementation could be fairly straightforward. I assume other providers would periodically fetch friends posts, upvotes, downvotes and other social interactions from other networks. When it comes to private content, the providers would probably have to send things only to other trusted providers that promise to show it only to the correct "circles". However, I don't see it as a big deal since privacy in G+ and Facebook is already somewhat of an illusion because it only takes one amongst hundreds of friends to share your stuff outside the network. Maybe your friends would need to authenticate into your network and do email verification at least once. Maybe they could use a Mozilla Persona authentication? There are companies that could do this without too much effort. Tumblr already publishes rss of their user's feed, they would only need to add the ability to consume rss and push for an upgrade of the rss protocol to support social features. Digg has shown interest in doing an rss reader, why shouldn't they work on upgrading the protocol to include more social features? Other web based rss reader companies could do it. A new team from this community. Or even better, cooperation of all of the above!
  • BariumBlue 14y ago
    >I think there should be a third option in the form of a decentralized social protocol. You mean something like diaspora? https://joindiaspora.com/ https://joindiaspora.com/
    • 14y ago
• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
• flaktrak 14y ago
  The fuhrer.. err I mean Larry Page has declared G+ or die! So expect more to go that competes or can't intergrate G+ properly. Google long ago lost the "Do no evil" moniker.
• jmilloy 14y ago
  Wait, you're not a Google fan anymore because you have to use Google in order to use a Google service? You're complaining that you have to use Chrome in order to use a Chrome add-on? And that you have to use Google+ in order to get Google+ notifications? You can add Google+ pages to your circles without this add-on; you don't like Google anymore because they're offering the ease of doing this in a single click in a particular browser, but you have to send them some data? If the content you're interested in is only available through Google+, that's not Google's fault. Complain instead to the website owner who decided to have content on their Google+ page.
• blhack 14y ago
  You guys in this thread whining about google: It isn't google that has changed, it is the whole world which has changed. Look at the things that some of you champion; the iPhone, the iPad...anything running iOS, anything made by apple computer, the company that is pushing the hardest against openness on the internet. Oh, you want some basic browser functionality like uploading files? Spend time learning objective C, writing an app, submitting it to us (can't let anything edgy get through! Don't use any APIs we don't like!) and then selling it in our closed off app store so that people stay in our warm walled in garden of shiny plastic. You talk about "growth hackers" or "hustlers" as if these people are anything but parasites on our creative culture. Yeah, google does some shitty things. Google+ is obnoxious. Some of the stuff happening with youtube is obnoxious, but google remains as one of the coolest companies in the world, still funding the coolest things in the world just because they can. If a little bit of annoying google+ talk is the price that humanity has to pay for things like google driverless cars, google glass, and google fiber FINALLY holding bandwidth providers to task on bringing fiber to the curb, then GOOD. I will continue to take that deal. The people whining about google+ will too. Oh hey! You know we could just give it all back. Back goes chrome! Remember when firefox leaked memory like a sieve but we all STILL ran it because there wasn't a viable alternative (unless you were double super extra hip and ran Opera) Back goes android! Enjoy choosing between Apples complete joke of a mobile operating system and RIM, or palm. Back goes google glass! Maybe Microsoft will sink the money required into developing a viable headmounted display. Back goes google cars! Oh! Maybe Mercedes will license some garbage developed by a defense contractor in the 90s and sell it on their most expensive luxury cars. Reading this thread reads like I'm reading the comments of a bunch of spoiled children. If you seriously hate google+ this much, then good! Use all of these wonderful, world changing tools we have around us and "hustle" and "growth hack" your way into a brand new web browser and suite of free mail, spam filtering, document storage, and search. I look forward to see it!
  • lwhi 14y ago
    This is a narrow sighted viewpoint. Google is a corporation that wants to win. Most corporations are the same. The fact that they are looking out for their own interests, doesn't mean we shouldn't look out for our own.
  • 14y ago
• nano111 14y ago
  Google is also starting to screw with the search results ... personalized search results for example... Maybe Mozilla should start a search engine
  • EduardoBautista 14y ago
    Why Mozilla?
    • ndesaulniers 14y ago
      Because we're the godzilla of search engines, apparently. Looking forward to the IPO! http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/4578856/mozilla-ceo-on-the-latest-version-of-firefox/ http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/4578856/mozilla-ceo-on-the-la...
  • o0-0o 14y ago
    In order to get truly relevant search results, I have to log out of Google. I really don't think they know what I want to find, and likely never will.
    • mieubrisse 14y ago
      If you don't like it (as neither you nor I do), then turn it off. Start a search, go to the "Search Settings" in the top right corner, then "Do not use personal search results".
• sanjiallblue 14y ago
  I think this blogger isn't understanding a fundamental reality of corporate structure that has little to do with some pie-eyed plan for what Google thinks the web "needs". This behavior isn't indicative of any design to "improve" the web, which I think could be said that a fair majority of programmers desire on a personal level and indeed what most laymen would admit to wanting as well. This has to do with Google focusing on brand homogenization. This is marketing, not web fundamentals. It's a company trying to extend, homogenize and monetize its brand and the services its brand can offer under those circumstances. I also thinks this differs in nature from the path Microsoft took with its OS strategy, though there are certainly some similarities. Is corporatism infesting Google? Of course it is! That's what happens when a corporation grows to the size Google has over the past decade. Now, this is in no way meant to be in any way a defense of corporate culture or an argument against lobbying tech companies to do what's best for the web. We generally want to see the web evolve in a positive way. However, if you're expecting that from a major corporation that at the end of the day has responsibilities to shareholders... well, to say the least you're going to be disappointed. Positive evolution will generally come from non-profits, because they can take risks. I defy any programmer to point to one of these tech giants and say they "definitively moved the web in a positive direction". Google's the absolute closest you could get using such a narrow criteria and that's largely due to their innovations in search that stem from their less profit-focused days and their more recent Google Fiber efforts. Even then, Google Fiber is an extension of Google's long-term corporate goals. The only point I want to argue is that we need to look at this situation through a realistic lens. When we lose sight of the realities of Corporate America and its relationship with technology, that's the point when we start engaging in counterproductive hyperbole.
• zmmmmm 14y ago
  The web had the feature and it failed: everyone flocked to Facebook and Twitter to live within their happy walled gardens. What do you want Google to do - sacrifice their business to pursue some ideological point about how geeks think the web should be? Google is being reactive here. The web already lost this feature, because us (we geeks) failed to make a distributed, federated model appetizing enough for Grandma and Aunt Maud to use. I think there's still opportunity for a federated model to arise and beat the pants off Facebook and Twitter (and G+ for that matter) but it's not going to happen as long as we're all in denial about the flaws of the old model.
• metaphorm 14y ago
  I'm not so fond of Google+ either, but really this is a lame post. RSS was just not that good of a technology and has been in zombie status for a couple of years now already. Its about time somebody took steps to put it out of its misery. Google+ is a shitty replacement for RSS and I don't even think its going to catch on, but at least now we have more of an opportunity to try and get open content syndication right.
  • voyou 14y ago
    "RSS was just not that good of a technology" What was wrong with it? I mean there were problems with the twenty slightly different versions, or whatever, but they were solved by Atom. What do you want in open content syndication that wouldn't naturally build on Atom?
    • metaphorm 14y ago
      lack of rich media support kept RSS limited to text based reader applications and therefore a less appealing option vs. just bookmarking actual websites and reading them in a browser (or mobile browser). dependence on aggregation tools running clientside also meant that operating an RSS reader had just as much overhead for the user as just using their browser already does. if its a worse experience than reading in the browser, and is equally complicated to do then there's no good reason to prefer RSS over a browser. a replacement technology should, in my mind, not be something that competes with the browser experience (as RSS/Atom did). at this moment I don't think there's a compelling use case for a replacement at all which is why we're not actually seeing active development of one. what I expect will happen is that more and more websites will eventually implement RESTful API's and then we'll just have the option of syndicating over REST calls instead of relying on RSS.
• o0-0o 14y ago
  FREEDOM. As long as things stay free, Google and anyone else are free to do what they want. There is also a corollary here: Every form of refuge has it's price. Democracy and republics are not perfect, but name a better system that has worked.
• fotoblur 14y ago
  My personal stream was my RSS feed, you want me to replace it with a Google+ profile. Interesting I wrote about this just about a year ago: Social Networks Killed the Content Providers (http://www.lanceramoth.com/blog/2012/05/social-networks-killed-the-content-providers http://www.lanceramoth.com/blog/2012/05/social-networks-kill...) I also introduced the idea of Personal Digital Asset (PDA). Would love to know what you think.
• felipelalli 14y ago
  If you don't like, make it better.
• danbmil99 14y ago
  Google+ is the Bob of our times
• druska 14y ago
  Google tracking codes are on a majority of sites anyway, and you probably find the sites using Google. They already know which URLs you go to.
  • acqq 14y ago
    Exactly. Only a few sites don't already notify your visit to Google. And if you already use Chrome every keypress in the address bar is already sent to Google. In some old times Google didn't get a notification about what you clicked after search. Now they do.
• sahaj 14y ago
  I wish Google would charge me for Reader. I'd be willing to pay up to $50/year.
• liotier 14y ago
  For a little background about where this rant comes from : the article's author was also the author of a nice feed aggregator - and he is a good guy. Anyone who has been invested in developing stream infrastructure to break through the silos that web sites used to be can only be aghast at the regressive trend pushed by large social walled gardens.
• voyou 14y ago
  This does suggest that they really did shut down Reader in order to push people to use Google+. This suggests that somebody at Google is a fucking idiot, because Google+ is in no way a substitute for Reader. Google+ (like Facebook or Twitter) gives me a stream of stuff that's happened recently - it's ephemeral, in that if I don't make a conscious effort to bookmark something I see there, I'll forget it. An RSS reader, on the other hand, remembers (and categorizes) everything unless I make a conscious choice to mark it as forgettable.
• mdellabitta 14y ago
  There's a false equivalence fallacy the author commits here where he assumes that the effort required to get a useful number of websites that also have Google+ pages to commit to embedding a specific tag is equal to the effort required to create this Chrome plugin that phones home, or that either of those two tasks could be accomplished by the same people.
• heja2009 14y ago
  I find it really depressing that this discussion immediately degrades into Apple vs Google, people feel a need to state that they are or have been a "fan" of Google before giving their statement and similar. If we want to really discuss about what a desirable future for the web is, how to further that cause, and who might be allies and foes we first have to overcome these attitudes.
• Crikey83 14y ago
  To those who are bitching about reduced privacy on the WWW, take a look at the world we live in....kids as young as 11 taking their own life due to being bullied on FailBook, low life scumbags sharing child pornography, the same scum using the web to find their next prey. If you have something to hide then build your own WWW. Quit bitching about "it's not the same Google", everything you have ever done on the WWW has been monitored, cencorsed and/or recorded. Get your game face bitches, because in 20 years Google will be able to tell you what time you took a crap and the exact portions of food it took to produce that turd!
• api 14y ago
  It's not Google's problem, or Facebook's or Microsoft's or anyone else's. The problem is architectural. With NAT and firewalls we have created a net that does not permit easy lateral communication. As a result, all communication must go through something in the "cloud" -- some third party. This is inherently favorable to monopolies for several reasons. IPv6 and killing the in-network firewall would change things immensely.
• bruceb 14y ago
  So google tells business hey setup a google+ account for your business to show yourself off...accept if a person is on their iPhone and comes to your google+ page they have to have google+ installed. How many are not going to bother installing the app and not come back to your google+ page? There is a difference between highly suggesting consumers use your product which google used to do and requiring they use your product. Sadly google has crossed that line.
• namuol 14y ago
  All this Apple vs Google talk is tiresome. People: complaining about Google doesn't mean praise for Apple, or vice versa. Defending Google's recent follies by comparing them to Apple is like telling someone to leave America if they don't like the PATRIOT Act.