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Google is simply trying to unify their services. YouTube was an acquisition, with it's own login system and social network. They don't want to maintain this se

Google is simply trying to unify their services. YouTube was an acquisition, with it's own login system and social network. They don't want to maintain this separation forever, they want a single signon for everything. Ditto for sharing and contacts. You had separate 'contacts' in Gmail, Latitude, G+, Reader, YouTube, and probably others I'm missing. Users shouldn't be prompted to maintain N different copies of this information and manage it in confusing ways. It's a mistake to view this as "they're forcing me to use the G+ social stream". It's more "they're consolidating my 5 different profiles and authentication credentials across services." Google could axe the social stream and this would still make sense.

nolok 13y ago
But why force me (if I link) to change the name I appear as on youtube to be the real one they required for g+ ? I can't believe I'm the only one with things I posted as FooBar42 that I don't want under the name Mr John Smith, not in an age where your name is googled for about anything.
- cbhl 13y ago
  The argument is that if you didn't want them posted under "Mr John Smith" you shouldn't have posted them at all. I think they let you delete/hide all your old comments as part of the transition, but agreed that only accounts for the personal account use case, not the corporate YouTube channel use case.
  - petitbeurre 13y ago
    That argument, though, makes no sense at all. I'm a homosexual, and living in a very conservative and homophobic part of France. I don't want any things related to homosexuality and the lgbt community posted under my real identity, because then any member of my family or any of my friends could stumble upon it and make problematical deductions. Does that mean that I shouldn't be involved online in the lgbt community whatsoever, because it's not something my relatives support? Another fairly easy counter-example would be the one of an anonymous online political activist. I don't get people who support that kind of arguments.
    - ballard 13y ago
      Anonimity is a basic human right that one should be free to exercise at any time. Without it, those in power or those crazies out there that have nothing better can easily find something to attack those they don't like. This is not the providence of "something to hide" but that people should be secure with certainty against all forms of intrusion that lacks probable cause. Anonymity is difficult for naïve people to understand: that what you say, online or offline, can at any point in the future (potentially indefinitely) may arbitrarily be used against you in familial, legal, political, business, personal, romantic or any other context. This amounts to individuals unwittingly manufacturing ammunition and handing it to their enemies.
      - yuhong 13y ago
        Agreed, but there is something wrong if people have to use it all the time.
        ballard 13y ago
        The world is the world. Because there are so many other people out there that might be up to no good, so many laws (US commercial code, anyone) that an individual will create so much digital dirt over their lifetime, it becomes very easy to attack anyone that does not just keep most things private as a best practice. It's nearly impossible to know which digital bits will be at some point in the future X years taken out of context for political, employment, romantic, legal or other purposes. "Three Felonies a Day" https://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/2013-June/008815.html https://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/2013-J...
        yuhong 13y ago
        Of course, how much that matters depends and if you limit to a subset it becomes much easier, but I definitely agree that people should have the right to be anonymous. I just don't like it when people have to do so, and do want to fix the problems if possible.
      - 13y ago
  - nitrogen 13y ago
    It's problematic that telecoms get retroactive immunity for their revelations of personal information, but ordinary people get retroactive punishment when their previously pseudonymous information becomes personalized.
dragonwriter 13y ago
I think the marketing mistake has been using the same brand name for the unified profile/login as the social stream.
ryanhuff 13y ago
You would be fooling yourself if you think somebody within Google isn't planning for the day that YouTube commenting is merged with G+ social streams. As they look to leverage social signals to improve search, centralizing the user's social footprint will be an important component, and using one of their more prolific social streams (YouTube) to prop-up G+ will be key.
- alwaysdoit 13y ago
  I wouldn't mind if YouTube showed me comments from people I know on top. It's not like YouTube comments could get worse...
- cromwellian 13y ago
  If that day comes, I'll might celebrate, because YouTube comments are mostly worthless, full of sexism, racism, insults, and sheer idiocy. I rarely come across a YouTube comment that imparted useful information. G+ doesn't really need propping up, most of the people I enjoy reading are on it, I get more engagement than I ever did on Twitter or FB with the people I'm interested in (note, not friends, but interests), and with a less infuriating comment system. I'd personally rather not have G+ turn into FB. In fact, I take back my first sentence, now that I think about it, I'm somewhat fearful of YouTube adopting G+ comments, because rather than improving the civility and intelligence of YouTube's comment audience, it might destroy the civility and intelligence of the G+ community.
  - AznHisoka 13y ago
    As well as spoilers. Grrr... They ruined the Red Wedding for me.
  - Kequc 13y ago
    I really wish there was some magic way for Google to figure out what is good quality content and float it to the top. I'm sure they are working on it c'mon Google you can do it! Before all the people on Youtube complaining about being asked to link a G+ profile finally adopt.
  - 13y ago
calinet6 13y ago
The problem is that they're not unifying their services well. In UX discussions this always comes up as one that sucks. Basically the Google UX, to me, is "Here's a bunch of stuff that we have. Good luck!" They need to seriously put the unifying UX of their entire brand from end-to-end as their top priority, so that you go to Google and can actually use what they offer in a cohesive way, instead of with piecemeal walled-off divisions of inconsistency. It's a huge problem to be sure, and there's no easy solution. This blog post is just a description of one annoying symptom. Meanwhile, what Google thinks of as good UX these days is removing features from their already minimal individual products. See: New Maps; Gmail New Compose. Their priorities are upside-down and I have no confidence they can turn their ship around...
- scholia 13y ago
  Plus, it's very hard to tell if a feature has been _removed_ or just hidden away where you're unlikely to find it. The core of the Google UI at the moment is: "Hey, move your mouse around the screen or just click somewhere and maybe something useful will slide out from where we've hidden it!" I exaggerate, but only slightly....
  - nitrogen 13y ago
    I exaggerate, but only slightly.... If anything, you're understating the frustration of the new GMail compose UI. My browser window hasn't gotten any smaller, but the amount of important information displayed at any given time by GMail continues to decrease. "Oh, you don't really need to see who you're sending this e-mail to, nor could you possibly care whether they're a To:, CC:, or BCC:, so we'll just hide them all behind a single line." "While we're at it, we'll make you use your mouse to see what formatting and linking options are available. Never mind that they're always in the same place, we just feel like hiding them from you, you know, to watch your mouse squirm!" "As an added bonus, we'll move the cursor back to the top of your composed text when our silly algorithm decides to unhide the quoted text! For free!"
    - scholia 13y ago
frozenport 13y ago
I don't want that! I want to remain anonymous to help improve the content of youtube without exposing myself to risk. For example I might want to post something bad about a competitor's youtube video, which will contribute to the discussion but I don't want my affiliation or name to distract from this conversation. The real problem is that the elimination of privacy that Google has so meticulously pursued has left their communities dull and idol, producing poor quality and non-stimulating content. Now I am going to think twice about upvoting that crazy youtube video, and something more mild will take its place in the rank hierarchy? What happened to the cool internet?
- oblio 13y ago
  If you're giving Youtube comments as a shining example of quality and stimulating comment, I guess something is totally wrong in this world. Even with the new rating system, the comments on Youtube are the best example of human stupidity.
  - frozenport 13y ago
    Its not about stimulation, it about ranking and feedback. Comments like 'This sucks' are also good.
    - avalaunch 13y ago
      I disagree. That sounds like a pretty useless comment to me being that you can already like or dislike a video. It's redundant.
  - tensor 13y ago
    That may be so, but the real name policy still has detrimental effects for some users. For example, I've stopped giving reviews to anything on google. Why? I don't want the things I like and dislike, and use broadcast to the world. Why should the entire planet know where I like to eat? Where I live? What I do in my spare time with apps? What my hobbies are? This is a massive privacy loss, and thus I don't review anything on google's platform. Anonymous reviews have value, even if they are more susceptible to being gamed.
knowaveragejoe 13y ago
You've already been able to log in to youtube using your Google account for some time. Only recently have they begun pushing to link the account to G+.
kenko 13y ago
"Google is simply trying to unify their services." Right, well, that's the problem. Google wants to unify their services, but I don't want to use the thereby unified services, which are, after all, conceptually distinct anyway. The complaint is that they're trying to unify their services. The explanation, when faced with that complaint, that they're trying to unify their services is a non-starter.
- VikingCoder 13y ago
  They are not conceptually distinct, to the vast majority of users. I mean, I'm sorry you feel that way. But it's an indefensible position.
  - kenko 13y ago
    "thing I use to send email" and "thing I use to watch music videos" are not conceptually distinct? Most users would send as emails to others the kinds of things they leave as comments on youtube?
    - VikingCoder 13y ago
      The word "I" showed up in both of those sentences. To most users, unifying all of their data adds a lot of value. Google reads my GMails from major airlines, and shows me when my next flight is when I Google Search for "when is my next flight". The flight also just pops up on Google Now on my Android phone. It also knows where I am, and where the airport is, so it tells me how long it will take to drive there. When I Google search for La Cucaracha on my desktop, when I walk out to my car and look at my phone, it automatically suggests Navigating to La Cucaracha. When I Subscribe to a YouTube video, it automatically shows up in my GMail as a feed. I find value in these things, and I'm sorry you don't.
      - v13inc 13y ago
        The funny thing is that all those features work right now, without unifying your Google accounts.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
gcb0 13y ago
I love to be able to refrigerate my soda while washing my clothes, all in my nexus 4. ... just sucks to have the soda can burst out because you know, my freezer is integrated in the washer. And my nexus battery now weights 100Ton. But thankfully LG will buy some small truck brand and solve that too! ...sounds retarded, but that's how I see what's google is doing. A total lack of connection to who uses their services and with common sense. All their services more or less already worked like this, with open APIs and decent standardized integration. but they decided to move away from it and use g+ as the glue. which they are probably sniffing.
lazyjones 13y ago
> Google is simply trying to unify their services That's silly. If they wanted to unify their services, they'd turn youtube channels into G+ profiles. And they'd do it without any hassle for the users. I'm sorry, but it's obvious that Google is desperately trying to inflate their G+ profile numbers by any means they can devise, because they won't admit to themselves that they've already lost the social network battle to FB. No amount of being apologetic and spin-doctoring can make this less obvious.
- cromwellian 13y ago
  Turning a YouTube channel into a G+ profile doesn't fix it. YouTube channels are often owned and managed by multiple people. A G+ profile is a user identity, G+ pages represent places or things. So you'd then force everyone to have a separate G+ account just for their YT channel so that they can share non-personal login credentials with other people managing this. This if anything would inflate G+ profile numbers more.
- deleted 13y ago
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- deleted 13y ago
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glesica 13y ago
I think his complaint was more about feeling forced into creating a G+ profile, not about unified sign-on. The unified sign-on should be able to work just fine whether or not one has a G+ profile, just like it works whether or not one uses Blogger, YouTube or any other service...
Grue3 13y ago
But everything worked just fine before, I had a single Google account, a single Youtube channel and a single G+ page, and signing into either of these would sign me into everything else. After Google decided to "unify" Youtube and G+ accounts, I now have 1 Google account, 2 Youtube channels and 2 G+ pages , and that's not counting an extra Youtube channel I created, which accounts for 1 extra Google account and 1 extra G+ page. I have more goddamn accounts than ever before, and it's a total pain to switch Youtube to the correct one. How is this unification?
- fenderstrat 13y ago
  I think the idea is one name per account. So if your Google Account was Sam Smith, your channel was Batman, and your G+ page was Joker, you would end up with three "accounts", each with its own G+ profile/page and channel.
BrandonM 13y ago
Except where it doesn't. I have a Google+ account. I also have a separate work email that uses a Google Apps account. Without my prompting, and after already indicating that I didn't want a Google+ account for my work account, Google displayed a distracting notification that I should add people to my (work) Google+ account, the account that I didn't create and definitely didn't want. Sometimes I don't want to use any of those five other services. And if I happen to watch some YouTube videos at work from time to time, I don't really want those to be associated with my Google Apps work account. So no, it is not a mistake to view it as Google forcing me to use social features that I don't want; that's exactly what it is!
mcv 13y ago
The acquisition of YouTube isn't that recent. It's been thoroughly integrated with Google's other stuff for quite some while now. The problem is that they want to make G+ the center of everything, and that's a stupid assumption. I mean, I love G+, and my YouTube account now also sports my G+ avatar, but it's obvious that that kind of integration isn't for everyone. There are older examples of problems with G+ integration: a year ago or so, G+ had that stupid "normal name" policy, and people who used an unusual name had their G+ account blocked. And if your G+ account was tied to a GMail account, that was also blocked. But if you only had a GMail account without G+, Google didn't complain if your name was unusual. The main thing that sort of stuff accomplishes, is that it gives people a good reason not to use G+.
adventured 13y ago
All Microsoft was doing is integrating a browser into the operating system, and trying to make it impossible to separate them. I don't regard that as grounds for anti-trust, but I do view it as ridiculous. And it's equally ridiculous for Google to try to trip users into using their other services by leveraging their overwhelmingly dominant search and video products. It'll be interesting to see if Google eventually claims that you can't separate G+ from YouTube and search, going down the same conceptual road as MS.
- scholia 13y ago
  It wasn't ridiculous. The idea was for IE to use existing components in the OS, and to allow other programs (including ones from third parties) to use components from the browser. This enabled you to open web pages in other applications, including Windows Explorer. Microsoft had to rewrite the IE3 browser into components, and this componentization was very popular at the time. It won Microsoft a huge deal with AOL and meant ISPs could customize IE (which Netscape wouldn't allow), which also contributed to IE's victory over Netscape Navigator. In the end, Microsoft won the browser case by 2-1 on appeal, and the US Justice Department lost it. It's nothing like the Google case.
altrego99 13y ago
Youtube can be unified, without displaying my G+ picture and profile on it. It simply requires a checkbox, and a new field - Youtube alias to be displayed.
mhartl 13y ago
*its own

nolok 13y ago

But why force me (if I link) to change the name I appear as on youtube to be the real one they required for g+ ? I can't believe I'm the only one with things I posted as FooBar42 that I don't want under the name Mr John Smith, not in an age where your name is googled for about anything.

cbhl 13y ago
The argument is that if you didn't want them posted under "Mr John Smith" you shouldn't have posted them at all. I think they let you delete/hide all your old comments as part of the transition, but agreed that only accounts for the personal account use case, not the corporate YouTube channel use case.
- petitbeurre 13y ago
  That argument, though, makes no sense at all. I'm a homosexual, and living in a very conservative and homophobic part of France. I don't want any things related to homosexuality and the lgbt community posted under my real identity, because then any member of my family or any of my friends could stumble upon it and make problematical deductions. Does that mean that I shouldn't be involved online in the lgbt community whatsoever, because it's not something my relatives support? Another fairly easy counter-example would be the one of an anonymous online political activist. I don't get people who support that kind of arguments.
  - ballard 13y ago
    Anonimity is a basic human right that one should be free to exercise at any time. Without it, those in power or those crazies out there that have nothing better can easily find something to attack those they don't like. This is not the providence of "something to hide" but that people should be secure with certainty against all forms of intrusion that lacks probable cause. Anonymity is difficult for naïve people to understand: that what you say, online or offline, can at any point in the future (potentially indefinitely) may arbitrarily be used against you in familial, legal, political, business, personal, romantic or any other context. This amounts to individuals unwittingly manufacturing ammunition and handing it to their enemies.
    - yuhong 13y ago
      Agreed, but there is something wrong if people have to use it all the time.
      - ballard 13y ago
        The world is the world. Because there are so many other people out there that might be up to no good, so many laws (US commercial code, anyone) that an individual will create so much digital dirt over their lifetime, it becomes very easy to attack anyone that does not just keep most things private as a best practice. It's nearly impossible to know which digital bits will be at some point in the future X years taken out of context for political, employment, romantic, legal or other purposes. "Three Felonies a Day" https://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/2013-June/008815.html https://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/2013-J...
        yuhong 13y ago
        Of course, how much that matters depends and if you limit to a subset it becomes much easier, but I definitely agree that people should have the right to be anonymous. I just don't like it when people have to do so, and do want to fix the problems if possible.
    - 13y ago
- nitrogen 13y ago
  It's problematic that telecoms get retroactive immunity for their revelations of personal information, but ordinary people get retroactive punishment when their previously pseudonymous information becomes personalized.

dragonwriter 13y ago

I think the marketing mistake has been using the same brand name for the unified profile/login as the social stream.

ryanhuff 13y ago

You would be fooling yourself if you think somebody within Google isn't planning for the day that YouTube commenting is merged with G+ social streams. As they look to leverage social signals to improve search, centralizing the user's social footprint will be an important component, and using one of their more prolific social streams (YouTube) to prop-up G+ will be key.

alwaysdoit 13y ago
I wouldn't mind if YouTube showed me comments from people I know on top. It's not like YouTube comments could get worse...
cromwellian 13y ago
If that day comes, I'll might celebrate, because YouTube comments are mostly worthless, full of sexism, racism, insults, and sheer idiocy. I rarely come across a YouTube comment that imparted useful information. G+ doesn't really need propping up, most of the people I enjoy reading are on it, I get more engagement than I ever did on Twitter or FB with the people I'm interested in (note, not friends, but interests), and with a less infuriating comment system. I'd personally rather not have G+ turn into FB. In fact, I take back my first sentence, now that I think about it, I'm somewhat fearful of YouTube adopting G+ comments, because rather than improving the civility and intelligence of YouTube's comment audience, it might destroy the civility and intelligence of the G+ community.
- AznHisoka 13y ago
  As well as spoilers. Grrr... They ruined the Red Wedding for me.
- Kequc 13y ago
  I really wish there was some magic way for Google to figure out what is good quality content and float it to the top. I'm sure they are working on it c'mon Google you can do it! Before all the people on Youtube complaining about being asked to link a G+ profile finally adopt.
- 13y ago

calinet6 13y ago

The problem is that they're not unifying their services well. In UX discussions this always comes up as one that sucks. Basically the Google UX, to me, is "Here's a bunch of stuff that we have. Good luck!" They need to seriously put the unifying UX of their entire brand from end-to-end as their top priority, so that you go to Google and can actually use what they offer in a cohesive way, instead of with piecemeal walled-off divisions of inconsistency. It's a huge problem to be sure, and there's no easy solution. This blog post is just a description of one annoying symptom. Meanwhile, what Google thinks of as good UX these days is removing features from their already minimal individual products. See: New Maps; Gmail New Compose. Their priorities are upside-down and I have no confidence they can turn their ship around...

scholia 13y ago
Plus, it's very hard to tell if a feature has been _removed_ or just hidden away where you're unlikely to find it. The core of the Google UI at the moment is: "Hey, move your mouse around the screen or just click somewhere and maybe something useful will slide out from where we've hidden it!" I exaggerate, but only slightly....
- nitrogen 13y ago
  I exaggerate, but only slightly.... If anything, you're understating the frustration of the new GMail compose UI. My browser window hasn't gotten any smaller, but the amount of important information displayed at any given time by GMail continues to decrease. "Oh, you don't really need to see who you're sending this e-mail to, nor could you possibly care whether they're a To:, CC:, or BCC:, so we'll just hide them all behind a single line." "While we're at it, we'll make you use your mouse to see what formatting and linking options are available. Never mind that they're always in the same place, we just feel like hiding them from you, you know, to watch your mouse squirm!" "As an added bonus, we'll move the cursor back to the top of your composed text when our silly algorithm decides to unhide the quoted text! For free!"
  - scholia 13y ago

frozenport 13y ago

I don't want that! I want to remain anonymous to help improve the content of youtube without exposing myself to risk. For example I might want to post something bad about a competitor's youtube video, which will contribute to the discussion but I don't want my affiliation or name to distract from this conversation. The real problem is that the elimination of privacy that Google has so meticulously pursued has left their communities dull and idol, producing poor quality and non-stimulating content. Now I am going to think twice about upvoting that crazy youtube video, and something more mild will take its place in the rank hierarchy? What happened to the cool internet?

oblio 13y ago
If you're giving Youtube comments as a shining example of quality and stimulating comment, I guess something is totally wrong in this world. Even with the new rating system, the comments on Youtube are the best example of human stupidity.
- frozenport 13y ago
  Its not about stimulation, it about ranking and feedback. Comments like 'This sucks' are also good.
  - avalaunch 13y ago
    I disagree. That sounds like a pretty useless comment to me being that you can already like or dislike a video. It's redundant.
- tensor 13y ago
  That may be so, but the real name policy still has detrimental effects for some users. For example, I've stopped giving reviews to anything on google. Why? I don't want the things I like and dislike, and use broadcast to the world. Why should the entire planet know where I like to eat? Where I live? What I do in my spare time with apps? What my hobbies are? This is a massive privacy loss, and thus I don't review anything on google's platform. Anonymous reviews have value, even if they are more susceptible to being gamed.

knowaveragejoe 13y ago

You've already been able to log in to youtube using your Google account for some time. Only recently have they begun pushing to link the account to G+.

kenko 13y ago

"Google is simply trying to unify their services." Right, well, that's the problem. Google wants to unify their services, but I don't want to use the thereby unified services, which are, after all, conceptually distinct anyway. The complaint is that they're trying to unify their services. The explanation, when faced with that complaint, that they're trying to unify their services is a non-starter.

VikingCoder 13y ago
They are not conceptually distinct, to the vast majority of users. I mean, I'm sorry you feel that way. But it's an indefensible position.
- kenko 13y ago
  "thing I use to send email" and "thing I use to watch music videos" are not conceptually distinct? Most users would send as emails to others the kinds of things they leave as comments on youtube?
  - VikingCoder 13y ago
    The word "I" showed up in both of those sentences. To most users, unifying all of their data adds a lot of value. Google reads my GMails from major airlines, and shows me when my next flight is when I Google Search for "when is my next flight". The flight also just pops up on Google Now on my Android phone. It also knows where I am, and where the airport is, so it tells me how long it will take to drive there. When I Google search for La Cucaracha on my desktop, when I walk out to my car and look at my phone, it automatically suggests Navigating to La Cucaracha. When I Subscribe to a YouTube video, it automatically shows up in my GMail as a feed. I find value in these things, and I'm sorry you don't.
    - v13inc 13y ago
      The funny thing is that all those features work right now, without unifying your Google accounts.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

gcb0 13y ago

I love to be able to refrigerate my soda while washing my clothes, all in my nexus 4. ... just sucks to have the soda can burst out because you know, my freezer is integrated in the washer. And my nexus battery now weights 100Ton. But thankfully LG will buy some small truck brand and solve that too! ...sounds retarded, but that's how I see what's google is doing. A total lack of connection to who uses their services and with common sense. All their services more or less already worked like this, with open APIs and decent standardized integration. but they decided to move away from it and use g+ as the glue. which they are probably sniffing.

lazyjones 13y ago

> Google is simply trying to unify their services That's silly. If they wanted to unify their services, they'd turn youtube channels into G+ profiles. And they'd do it without any hassle for the users. I'm sorry, but it's obvious that Google is desperately trying to inflate their G+ profile numbers by any means they can devise, because they won't admit to themselves that they've already lost the social network battle to FB. No amount of being apologetic and spin-doctoring can make this less obvious.

cromwellian 13y ago
Turning a YouTube channel into a G+ profile doesn't fix it. YouTube channels are often owned and managed by multiple people. A G+ profile is a user identity, G+ pages represent places or things. So you'd then force everyone to have a separate G+ account just for their YT channel so that they can share non-personal login credentials with other people managing this. This if anything would inflate G+ profile numbers more.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

glesica 13y ago

I think his complaint was more about feeling forced into creating a G+ profile, not about unified sign-on. The unified sign-on should be able to work just fine whether or not one has a G+ profile, just like it works whether or not one uses Blogger, YouTube or any other service...

Grue3 13y ago

But everything worked just fine before, I had a single Google account, a single Youtube channel and a single G+ page, and signing into either of these would sign me into everything else. After Google decided to "unify" Youtube and G+ accounts, I now have 1 Google account, 2 Youtube channels and 2 G+ pages , and that's not counting an extra Youtube channel I created, which accounts for 1 extra Google account and 1 extra G+ page. I have more goddamn accounts than ever before, and it's a total pain to switch Youtube to the correct one. How is this unification?

fenderstrat 13y ago
I think the idea is one name per account. So if your Google Account was Sam Smith, your channel was Batman, and your G+ page was Joker, you would end up with three "accounts", each with its own G+ profile/page and channel.

BrandonM 13y ago

Except where it doesn't. I have a Google+ account. I also have a separate work email that uses a Google Apps account. Without my prompting, and after already indicating that I didn't want a Google+ account for my work account, Google displayed a distracting notification that I should add people to my (work) Google+ account, the account that I didn't create and definitely didn't want. Sometimes I don't want to use any of those five other services. And if I happen to watch some YouTube videos at work from time to time, I don't really want those to be associated with my Google Apps work account. So no, it is not a mistake to view it as Google forcing me to use social features that I don't want; that's exactly what it is!

mcv 13y ago

The acquisition of YouTube isn't that recent. It's been thoroughly integrated with Google's other stuff for quite some while now. The problem is that they want to make G+ the center of everything, and that's a stupid assumption. I mean, I love G+, and my YouTube account now also sports my G+ avatar, but it's obvious that that kind of integration isn't for everyone. There are older examples of problems with G+ integration: a year ago or so, G+ had that stupid "normal name" policy, and people who used an unusual name had their G+ account blocked. And if your G+ account was tied to a GMail account, that was also blocked. But if you only had a GMail account without G+, Google didn't complain if your name was unusual. The main thing that sort of stuff accomplishes, is that it gives people a good reason not to use G+.

adventured 13y ago

All Microsoft was doing is integrating a browser into the operating system, and trying to make it impossible to separate them. I don't regard that as grounds for anti-trust, but I do view it as ridiculous. And it's equally ridiculous for Google to try to trip users into using their other services by leveraging their overwhelmingly dominant search and video products. It'll be interesting to see if Google eventually claims that you can't separate G+ from YouTube and search, going down the same conceptual road as MS.

scholia 13y ago
It wasn't ridiculous. The idea was for IE to use existing components in the OS, and to allow other programs (including ones from third parties) to use components from the browser. This enabled you to open web pages in other applications, including Windows Explorer. Microsoft had to rewrite the IE3 browser into components, and this componentization was very popular at the time. It won Microsoft a huge deal with AOL and meant ISPs could customize IE (which Netscape wouldn't allow), which also contributed to IE's victory over Netscape Navigator. In the end, Microsoft won the browser case by 2-1 on appeal, and the US Justice Department lost it. It's nothing like the Google case.

altrego99 13y ago

Youtube can be unified, without displaying my G+ picture and profile on it. It simply requires a checkbox, and a new field - Youtube alias to be displayed.

mhartl 13y ago

*its own