6 ms·

This is google's own version of "the burning platform" (that is, the open web, in some of the more paranoid exec's vision). They are doing everything they can t

This is google's own version of "the burning platform" (that is, the open web, in some of the more paranoid exec's vision). They are doing everything they can think of to fence off their own portion of the web before it's too late. Every product division has been (or had been) instructed to come up with a plan to integrate somehow with G+. This current youtube disaster is one of the results.

davidgerard 13y ago
The amazing thing was they managed to blow thirteen years' good will in about two months. All gone. When techies are seriously considering using Bing for search ... you know your brand's gone toxic. If they'd just backed off in the nymwars, WE'D ALL BE OVER THERE NOW. Fucksakes.
- mistermann 13y ago
  I agree with this. Whether it matters if this good will is gone I don't know, but it might - I know my opinion of google has gone from extremely high to really low, and it is partially so low because of their importance, I believe they have a responsibility to act properly. I truly believe they are opening a gap that others could exploit. Microsoft, so late to this party, with their userbase and technical know-how, with a lot of their ill deeds from the past forgotten or forgiven. If they decided that they are going to do it right, and not try to exploit users, they could become a threat again. I wonder if they are capable of this anymore though. Or, reddit, with their substantial userbase of young, technically advanced, and influential users - if they could figure out the scalability issues, they could launch a youtube competitor, for example, and LOTS of people would move there very quickly, even if it is not as good, because they are (so far) known to be pure, whereas google has now proven that is is not pure, and dishonest (do no evil). It's certainly not easy, but my point is, it's a lot easier when influential and vocal technical users have turned on you, and the degree to which they've turned.
  - gcb1 13y ago
    reddit is an echo chamber even worse than here. i dread depending on its platform for any content
    - mkr-hn 13y ago
      Reddit is not a monolith. There are thousands of communities for every interest beyond the defaults.
      - ta_delited 13y ago
        I already left reddit a while ago following trend of wise people who did it before me because reddit got buried in stupid memes, cats pictures and copypasta. Comments lost insight and the hive mind took over.
    - chetanahuja 13y ago
      Reddit is actually the most powerful facebook-alternative in existence today. And I mean alternative in the sense of "community for online conversations" and not necessarily, "place to post baby pictures". The sort of political and organizing power reddit has shown recently (say, with the SOPA campaign) is not thinkable on facebook or google+. An AMA on reddit has also become a required stop for actors/directors/authors etc. for promoting their latest projects. G+ can only dream of such reach and power and facebook is by design (and branding) not suitable for such "interactive-broadcasting" type of usage.
      - gcb1 13y ago
        by your logic we should continue to use facebook then. now, if you want to start to discuss effectivenes instead of size, take a look at slashcode voting system.
    - PaulHoule 13y ago
      More to the point, it's a nasty community. (Second in nastiness only to Wikipedia) The tone of reddit is set more by downvoting rather than upvoting. Any post on proggit about any language people actually use gets voted down by an army of bots written in languages that people don't use. Also, they're a bunch of communists because they'll vote you down if you drop any hint that (1) you're in it for the money or (2) you care about business in any way. Reddit's negativity might make it spam resistant, but it will repell mainstream audiences and prevent their expansion.
- abraxasz 13y ago
  Just one data point here, but I effectively switched to Bing for search (actually, DDG, but they use Bing among other things to get their results). In all honesty, I think that google's results are slightly better, especially when it comes to technical type of searches (maths, statistics, academic papers, etc..), but for the most common types of searches, DDG does just fine. Reasons for the switch? I was getting a bit upset by all these privacy things, and the NSA stuff got me over the edge 4 or 5 months ago. Not that my new setup is anymore secure, but I think that DDG does an honest effort to not actively screw me over, which is more than can be said of the other tech cos so I'm willing to encourage that type of behavior by giving them a shot.
  - a3n 13y ago
    The nice thing about DDG is that it's extremely easy to use the DDG browser interface to search google if you decide to do so. In Firefox, if you have DDG as your default search: ctrl-k (next thing you type will be a search) !g (A DDG "bang code," in this case "search google") whatever (this search will be sent to google) <ctrl-k>!g whatever, and you're sent to a google search result page. Bonus, you get a better results page URL than google usually gives you. DDG gets better and better every day. I noticed recently that if you search for a street address DDG gives you a map result from open street map, and gives you links to bing, mapquest, google maps and open street map. It's great. And btw the DDG bang code for google maps is "!gm" and the bang code for google news is "!gn".
- a3n 13y ago
  It was specifically the nymwars that drove me out, they wouldn't accept my legal, tax-paying name. Well, that and it was a pretty vacuous experience.
- ta_delited 13y ago
  Sorry to disappoint but techies are long gone to duckduckgo. I did use bing maps though as they are incredibly better than google maps.
a3n 13y ago
> They are doing everything they can think of to fence off their own portion of the web before it's too late. <cough> AOL <cough> <cough>

davidgerard 13y ago

The amazing thing was they managed to blow thirteen years' good will in about two months. All gone. When techies are seriously considering using Bing for search ... you know your brand's gone toxic. If they'd just backed off in the nymwars, WE'D ALL BE OVER THERE NOW. Fucksakes.

mistermann 13y ago
I agree with this. Whether it matters if this good will is gone I don't know, but it might - I know my opinion of google has gone from extremely high to really low, and it is partially so low because of their importance, I believe they have a responsibility to act properly. I truly believe they are opening a gap that others could exploit. Microsoft, so late to this party, with their userbase and technical know-how, with a lot of their ill deeds from the past forgotten or forgiven. If they decided that they are going to do it right, and not try to exploit users, they could become a threat again. I wonder if they are capable of this anymore though. Or, reddit, with their substantial userbase of young, technically advanced, and influential users - if they could figure out the scalability issues, they could launch a youtube competitor, for example, and LOTS of people would move there very quickly, even if it is not as good, because they are (so far) known to be pure, whereas google has now proven that is is not pure, and dishonest (do no evil). It's certainly not easy, but my point is, it's a lot easier when influential and vocal technical users have turned on you, and the degree to which they've turned.
- gcb1 13y ago
  reddit is an echo chamber even worse than here. i dread depending on its platform for any content
  - mkr-hn 13y ago
    Reddit is not a monolith. There are thousands of communities for every interest beyond the defaults.
    - ta_delited 13y ago
      I already left reddit a while ago following trend of wise people who did it before me because reddit got buried in stupid memes, cats pictures and copypasta. Comments lost insight and the hive mind took over.
  - chetanahuja 13y ago
    Reddit is actually the most powerful facebook-alternative in existence today. And I mean alternative in the sense of "community for online conversations" and not necessarily, "place to post baby pictures". The sort of political and organizing power reddit has shown recently (say, with the SOPA campaign) is not thinkable on facebook or google+. An AMA on reddit has also become a required stop for actors/directors/authors etc. for promoting their latest projects. G+ can only dream of such reach and power and facebook is by design (and branding) not suitable for such "interactive-broadcasting" type of usage.
    - gcb1 13y ago
      by your logic we should continue to use facebook then. now, if you want to start to discuss effectivenes instead of size, take a look at slashcode voting system.
  - PaulHoule 13y ago
    More to the point, it's a nasty community. (Second in nastiness only to Wikipedia) The tone of reddit is set more by downvoting rather than upvoting. Any post on proggit about any language people actually use gets voted down by an army of bots written in languages that people don't use. Also, they're a bunch of communists because they'll vote you down if you drop any hint that (1) you're in it for the money or (2) you care about business in any way. Reddit's negativity might make it spam resistant, but it will repell mainstream audiences and prevent their expansion.
abraxasz 13y ago
Just one data point here, but I effectively switched to Bing for search (actually, DDG, but they use Bing among other things to get their results). In all honesty, I think that google's results are slightly better, especially when it comes to technical type of searches (maths, statistics, academic papers, etc..), but for the most common types of searches, DDG does just fine. Reasons for the switch? I was getting a bit upset by all these privacy things, and the NSA stuff got me over the edge 4 or 5 months ago. Not that my new setup is anymore secure, but I think that DDG does an honest effort to not actively screw me over, which is more than can be said of the other tech cos so I'm willing to encourage that type of behavior by giving them a shot.
- a3n 13y ago
  The nice thing about DDG is that it's extremely easy to use the DDG browser interface to search google if you decide to do so. In Firefox, if you have DDG as your default search: ctrl-k (next thing you type will be a search) !g (A DDG "bang code," in this case "search google") whatever (this search will be sent to google) <ctrl-k>!g whatever, and you're sent to a google search result page. Bonus, you get a better results page URL than google usually gives you. DDG gets better and better every day. I noticed recently that if you search for a street address DDG gives you a map result from open street map, and gives you links to bing, mapquest, google maps and open street map. It's great. And btw the DDG bang code for google maps is "!gm" and the bang code for google news is "!gn".
a3n 13y ago
It was specifically the nymwars that drove me out, they wouldn't accept my legal, tax-paying name. Well, that and it was a pretty vacuous experience.
ta_delited 13y ago
Sorry to disappoint but techies are long gone to duckduckgo. I did use bing maps though as they are incredibly better than google maps.

a3n 13y ago

> They are doing everything they can think of to fence off their own portion of the web before it's too late. <cough> AOL <cough> <cough>