19 ms·

Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?

353 points by dsl 13y ago

I would love to hear how Google pitches G+ and the disaster that is Youtube at this point internally. How do they keep morale up?

adamnemecek 13y ago
Somehow I don't think that someone who is a cog in the machine has much say in this.
- natch 13y ago
  Maybe he/she is asking the non-cogs. Let's see if they speak up forthrightly, or give us another faux surprise "what the..." post.
yuhong 13y ago
This article that was submitted to HN had a section on Vic Gundotra that should have clues: http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2013/09/20/sex_and_politics_at_google_it_s_a_game_of_thrones_in_mountain_view.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2013/09/20/sex_a...
- morgante 13y ago
  Original: http://www.businessinsider.com/sex-and-politics-at-google-its-a-game-of-thrones-in-mountain-view-2013-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/sex-and-politics-at-google-it...
- yuhong 13y ago
  HN submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6420546 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6420546
jmduke 13y ago
So I don't work for Google and I've never worked for Google. I do, however, have two things you might want to keep in mind: 1. Google, according to Wikipedia, has 46,000 employees. The number of employees who are in a position to influence policy regarding Google+ adoption over the Google suite of products is likely less than one hundred (or .2%). It is entirely possible -- likely, even! -- that the other 99.8% of those employees do not agree with the Google+ strategy. It is also entirely possible -- likely, even! -- that those employees are encouraged to voice their opinions internally (though voicing those opinions externally doesn't really accomplish anything extra.) 2. You can disagree with Google's tactics, motives, and end-goals, but I'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn't believe that the average Google employee is very intelligent. It is entirely possible -- likely, even! -- that one of these employees did a cost-benefit analysis somewhere along the line (likely before Google+ was released to the public) and discovered that the cost of pushing an umbrella identity (pissing off users, possibly lowering retention and engagement) is outweighed by the benefits of such a strategy (attracting 'whale' consumers, strengthening advertising profiles for consumers).
- RodericDay 13y ago
  I don't know what you were thinking when you added those interjections to every other sentence but this post is condescending as hell.
  - javert 13y ago
    I didn't take it that way, for some reason. I interpreted them as friendly, and I thought they were helpful in making what I think is a very good point.
    - xarball 13y ago
      I write like that on occasion. Pretty sure it's because my thought process isn't like a linear story. It's more like a series of contextually leveled bullets -- each inner statement adding some useful (albeit sometimes unnecessary!) information to the overall discourse. I can assure you that people who write like that don't mean to be intimidating or rude. They're probably just trying to leave no gap unexplored! (Much like how programmers have to think!)
  - jmduke 13y ago
    I honestly wasn't trying to be condescending, and apologize if it came off that way. (I'll leave the original post unedited so it doesn't look like you're crazy or anything.) That being said, Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users? is an incredibly loaded question and I think my tone might have stemmed from that.
    - Dylan16807 13y ago
      >That being said, Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users? is an incredibly loaded question and I think my tone might have stemmed from that. It doesn't seem very loaded to me. The implication is simply that G+ is bad. Nothing more. That's a reasonable implication for someone to make. It's not a 'have you stopped beating your wife' type of question.
yuhong 13y ago
There is also a dead comment by Gthrowaway1 in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6732425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6732425
- psbp 13y ago
  What are you linking to? The only comment about what Gthrowaway1 said is about Gthrowaway1 deleting the comment.
  - yuhong 13y ago
    Turn on showdead then scroll down to the bottom.
    - psbp 13y ago
      I see, I've heard Vic is notorious for forcing his own products. But if it's truly an issue, why does Larry allow Vic to exercise so much control? It sounds like the entire executive staff is to blame.
      - yuhong 13y ago
        That is why I posted another comment with a link you should read.
      - o0-0o 13y ago
        Vivek is from India. Vic is his American name. Just sayin'.
  - r0h1n 13y ago
    I'm not sure if reproducing a dead comment violates some kind of unwritten HN guideline, but here it is: =============================================== Gthrowaway1 2 days ago | link [dead] The Google bashing is well deserved. Even people at Google despise Vic Gundotra (just check memegen.googleplex.com today), yet this incompetent figure is allowed to continue alienating users and driving Google's brand into the ground. Vic, do us a favor: Go back to Microsoft and never return! Disclaimer: I work for Google.
googlemployee1 13y ago
I work pretty high up at Google, and I (obviously) made this account to post in this thread. Google is effectively "dead" in my opinion, and this mirrors (at least in my experience) the feelings of many of our other higher-ups who are concerned with technology rather than the business. Everything has stagnated, it's no longer fun to work here, and it's entirely about making money now. The claims that we don't bend over for government agencies is entirely bullshit. Most of what they wanted was done without question (though I can't say how much of a choice we had). The company will continue, but you'll see us fall out of style, in a similar fashion to what has happened to Microsoft.
- datahipster 13y ago
  Can you provide some proof as to "work[ing] pretty high up at Google"? Just curious.
- psbp 13y ago
  Sorry if this is true, but it seems too vague and brash to be authentic. Can you describe in more detail what's wrong with google at the moment?
- davidjgraph 13y ago
  So they said no in the interview, huh? Let's not feed the trolls, yeah?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- wrongc0ntinent 13y ago
  Wouldn't be surprised if this was true. On their other hand, there's a 4chan thread on the front page :)
- BorisMelnik 13y ago
  nothing new said here.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
nostromo 13y ago
It seems simple, honestly. The likelihood that people will stop using YouTube because of G+ is nil.
- brink 13y ago
  I use it a lot less, tbh.
- nacs 13y ago
  It's quite the opposite for me. I've started moving my stuff off of Google as this was one of the last straws in my book. I'd already switched to using DDG and Startpage for my searches and am currently in the process of moving my Google apps email to my own server. When that's done I plan on deleting my Youtube and Google accounts. This latest Google+ push has made me realize just how far Google is willing to go to capture more data on their users instead of focusing on providing the best service possible as they used to.
  - pavs 13y ago
    You are not a target user for google products and services, thats why they are not too worried about how you or users like you feel about it. See also: Facebook. A lot of noise was made about facebook privacy (inside the HN and other tech eco chambers) and a lot of noise was made about people quitting facebook because of privacy. But in reality probably only .00000001% of facebook users probably quit because of privacy reasons, which is probably a drop in a bucket compare to the amount of new users they get everyday. Google is doing this because they can. They are in a market dominant position with both youtube and Google search that they can afford to make decision, which in hindsight might not be popular with some users, but will close to nothing to harm their bottom line.
    - denzil_correa 13y ago
      > But in reality probably only .00000001% of facebook users probably quit because of privacy reasons, which is probably a drop in a bucket compare to the amount of new users they get everyday. Normalization is a tricky job. Your assumption is that the entire set of users were aware of privacy problems with Facebook. Out of the universal set of Facebook users, there would be two subsets - people aware of privacy problems and their ill effects and people who don't. You should check "how many people quit (or significantly reduced activity on) Facebook, once they found out about privacy issues and their effects" and then report the percentage.
s-topper 13y ago
YouTube comments were already a cesspool. Now, with added "shared via Google+", it has become unbearable. I added this rule in AdBlockPlus to block YouTube comments: youtube.com###watch-discussion
tasoeur 13y ago
From what I heard from Google employees, G+ has been highly prioritized over many projects (and some others which closed like google lab, reader, etc.). Facing the social network giant that is Facebook, G+ has to become successful after many past failures, and to do so, they try to force their way through, and make it ubiquitous. However, this Youtube chapter was probably a step too far, since very intrusive and noticeable.
gkoberger 13y ago
In addition to what other people have said: Googlers love Google Plus. I haven't met a Googler (and, I know many) that doesn't love it. After all, for them, it's not a barren wasteland. They have a very active network (coworkers/friends). I don't think this answers your question, however most Googlers like G+.
- nostromo 13y ago
  It's a much better product than Facebook. But a better social product means nothing without an active network of users.
  - Geee 13y ago
    Better in what way? G+ has confusing and horrible interface, it's slow, and keeps asking me to import friends every single time I open up the page. That's not 'better product' in my opinion.
    - cromwellian 13y ago
      Better photos experience, better media embedding, better commenting (until Facebook later copied G+), better search, simpler privacy control system, better notification drop down, better mobile app, etc Asking to import and nag dialogues, I agree. They need to stop that.
    - wyclif 13y ago
      Compared to Facebook, it's beautifully designed.
      - dredmorbius 13y ago
        That ... actually makes me wince a bit. For the Facebookers. http://stylebot.me/styles/2446 http://stylebot.me/styles/2446 That's what it took for me to be able to tolerate the Plus.
  - acdha 13y ago
jmillikin 13y ago
Internally, G+ is marketed as a unified login/account system. Management's stated reasoning goes something like: * It's silly to force users to have separate accounts for Google services because most users would prefer to have Gmail, Docs/Drive, YouTube, Calendar, and so on under the same account/identity. * Users who want to have separate public identities will create pseudonymous "Pages" for each of their identities. These pages will still be owned by the same account, so the user only has to log in once. * Users who are strongly opposed to a unified Google account are a sufficiently small population that it is acceptable to inconvenience them if doing so improves the experience of every other user. By itself, these arguments are reasonable and could probably have been implemented without too much trouble (though "Pages" continues to be a confusing and unclear term). The problem is that the new account system was introduced at the exact same time as a social network, with the /same name/, and that the social network decided to inject a hard requirement of Facebook-style name validation rules into the new profile system. Now the term "Google+" has become so strongly connected with the Google+ social network (and its infamous names policy) that any attempt to expand the Google+ account system is met with fear and outrage. I don't think upper management expected this or understands why the community reacted thus, just as they didn't expect or understand why requiring a Firstname Lastname format on the Internet was problematic. I don't believe Google+ management is malicious, but they do seem woefully unaware of how internet-native communities behave.
- danbmil99 13y ago
  You know a company has jumped shark when employees start explanations for their behavior with a phrase like "Management's stated reasoning goes something like:"
  - jmillikin 13y ago
    I believe that many internet flame wars are caused by inaccurate or imprecise statements. It is important to me to indicate the source and quality of information that I post. What would you have written?
    - 13y ago
joeld42 13y ago
Not a google employee, but here's my take. It seems like value in web ecosystem is changing from "views" to "verbs" -- like, share, etc.. actions that spread content rather than passively consuming it. Google has based its business on monetizing "views" and its competitors (fb) are building on verbs. Also, Google has to maintain a forest of separate identities for everyone. (youtube, gmail, g+, etc). It's super annoying just to maintain one login. There's huge business value in consolidating those, even without adding features. Finally, Youtube comments are a cesspool. Even when they're not racist or threatening, they're immature and, at best "wow that's awesome". They drive viewers away. I bet google wants to try to do-over comments in a way that makes them useful to people, not unsettling. And I would hesitate to call it a disaster. Sure there's a lot of whining about it now, especially in tech circles, but every big interface change comes with a wave of whiners. We'll see in three or four weeks if anyone is complaining. They'd certainly have a much tougher time doing this if there were another option for the masses, but for most people YouTube is it. Saying people are going to quit watching or uploading to youtube is silly, they'll go where? Vimeo? They're going to keep tweaking it, people are going to adapt and learn, videos of cats falling off objects will continue to be uploaded. ps: "How do they keep morale up"? Free food and big piles of money. How else do you do it?
jrockway 13y ago
I have no idea what the official party line is... but doesn't it make at least a little bit of sense to unify two social networks owned by the same company? One thought about real names: what does your contacts database look like on your phone? While I know a lot of people by their online handles, I also know their real name, and I typically choose to enter that real name into my phone. Maybe this is uncommon, but if not, if you're building a communication platform, it does make some sense for the user-entered data to follow this format. Is there some intrinsic reason that someone be referred to as "Jonathan Rockway" when you send them a message via the SMS protocol, but "jrockway" if you send that same message via Jabber? It then follows to wonder: if you're talking to your friends via YouTube, why would you use yet another nickname? Maybe what people want is a unique identifier that only they know, and then choose to share a different name with different groups of people? I don't have any strong feelings one way or the other, but I am interested in what other people have to say.
- alayne 13y ago
  Google has owned youtube for 7 years and this year they decided to mess with people. Why?
  - jrockway 13y ago
    Probably a combination of: having the idea, having the right infrastructure, and having a team of engineers to write the code and migrate the data.
- dizzystar 13y ago
  >> While I know a lot of people by their online handles, I also know their real name, This can't possibly be true. I easily interact with 100+ people on various platforms. I don't know any of their names. I consider them "friends" in a way, but their real names are wholly irrelevant to me. >> if you're talking to your friends via YouTube No... You are having a discussion about the video. This is certainly not your friends. You can argue this, but if everyone is friends talking to each other, why are there still so many people willing to blatantly troll people they obviously don't know? I'm not sure what world you are painting, but this does not reflect any reality I am aware of.
libovness 13y ago
Don't forget that one of the tacit reasons for G+'s existence is simply to have a reason to encourage G+ buttons on each page for further tracking of what's happening on the internet. Using a single identity helps to reconcile a unique user that help both the advertiser reach "uniques" and for Google to better understand that user's behavior. Back to the point: Google's ethos is to track and analyze as much of what's happening on the Internet as possible. If, as an employee, you don't appreciate that this is Google's bread and butter, you simply may not care enough about these things to ever get worked up about G+'s account management.
- jmillikin 13y ago
  From https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1319578 https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1319578 : > The +1 button isn’t used to track your visits across the web. > Google doesn’t keep a persistent record of your browsing > history as part of the process of showing you a +1 button or > otherwise use the fact that you personally have visited a page > with the +1 button.
  - joeyo 13y ago
    Okay, so the mere _presence_ of the +1 button in a browser doesn't track visits across the web. But when you press the button, "Google receives information about your Google profile, the URL you +1, your IP address, and other browser-related information."
    - humbledrone 13y ago
      If you click the button, it lights up in red and also shows up in the +1's tab on your plus.google.com profile (which you can make public or private). Since the +1 button is served from Google's servers and displayed via an iframe, Google of course receives client information when you click it. You're making a request to Google's servers.
      - joeyo 13y ago
        It sounds like we're saying the same thing. I just was pointing out that this is all entirely consistent with the entire point of G+ being the "further tracking of what's happening on the internet."
amasad 13y ago
I'd be more concerned when they start forcing G+ on open platforms like the Web and Android. Maybe it's already started with Android KitKat shipping with Hangouts as the default messaging app.
- TheLegace 13y ago
  The worst part is I can't even disable it if I am using my another SMS app, so now I have to clear two notifications for my text message and 50% of the time I usually end up in the Hangouts app where I don't want to be. When will this madness stop?
  - tjohns 13y ago
    Your other SMS app is broken needs to update to the new API that was introduced in KitKat, which should fix both problems: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2013/10/getting-your-sms-apps-ready-for-kitkat.html http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2013/10/getting-your-... Intercepting SMS required using a hidden API before. Now it's an officially supported feature.
    - TheLegace 13y ago
      My apologies then. I will contact the app developer.
- tjohns 13y ago
  As mentioned in my other reply here, KitKat added an API which explicitly lets users change their default SMS app. The way apps did it in the past required using a hidden API and wasn't guaranteed to work. No conspiracy theories necessary. :)
mcphilip 13y ago
Not a google employee, but this disgusting mistreatment of its users may actually be a good thing if it blows up in their faces. My prediction is that the change to automatically showing the users g+ profile pic next to comments will be what gets them in hot water by empowering stalkers and trolls. Here's a simple example, if you go to the video for Miley Cyrus - Wrecking Ball, there are the usual back and forth comments arguing her merits. However, you can now easily spot preteen girls if you were looking for that specific demographic, and then subscribe to them for more efficient creeping. Shame on Google. This behavior is stunningly evil.
- minwcnt5 13y ago
  What? Hasn't G+ always showed profile pics next to comments? I don't understand why that would suddenly become a problem just because it's now enabled on YT too. It only makes stalking easier in the sense that there's a greater volume of comments to stalk.
  - mcphilip 13y ago
    The point is that it makes stalking much more efficient and there's no way to protect oneself from it on YouTube without changing the profile pic. The current #1 submission on HN is from a woman slamming google for this problem [1]. On the YouTube side the poster of the current top comment on the Miley Cyrus video is getting hostile replies based on the profile pic being of a very young girl. [1]https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z12gzxkxvpvautd3d231ylly2oyrtzjlb https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z12gzxkxvpvautd3d23...
    - minwcnt5 13y ago
      If you read the comments on that post or the HN thread you would see that you can link your YT identity to a G+ "page", where you can set the name and profile pic to whatever you want. It sounds like your real issue is with the fact they haven't made this more widely known, or part of the conversion flow. Your original complaint still makes no sense to me and just reads like more of the same knee/circle-jerk reaction.
MrBra 13y ago
I am very positive this would be the perfect moment to start a kickstarer funded youtube clone! Yea, glad I inspired your next big project, thank me later! (But please don't forget to... I know you won't if you are a good hacker. I am not in the position to dedicate any time/resources to this project. Please ask me for some contact info when you are sure you will be diving into this. Please do it, and... good luck!)
Narkov 13y ago
Users != customers. Customers > users.
- davidgerard 13y ago
  To be fair, even Google's paying customers get really pissed off at being treated like the users.
mohamedmansour 13y ago
Ever since Google has been integrating all their services to Google+, I have been using Google differently now: 1) Anonymous or no commenting on YouTube 2) Using Windows 8.1 Mail app to access Gmail. Because seeing that Google+ notification icon is distracting and annoying me 3) Stopped rating apps on Google Play store 4) Stopped contributing reviews to Local 5) Trying to stop using Google's Web products in favor of apps instead because of that damn Notifications bar. I understand using a single Google Account for all services, but linking them all to one service where that service acts as a Social Network is not a service I would want to use anymore. They acquired Meeboo bar, and it seems they want every service they own have that bar and I despised that bar. Totally the wrong direction to take. Treating each service separately would have been better and giving the option to the user to show that bar would have been great.
gobbluth 13y ago
Not a Google employee, just a satisfied member. As far as I can tell, these are the following flaws with G+: 1) It's idiotic that my URL must be FirstnameLastname1234. 2) GDrive storage (which I use to upload 2000px G+ photos) is unfortunately expensive when compared to Everpix's unlimited storage. Everpix would have been quite profitable at G+'s scale, too. If Google invested this much in photo enhancement services, why not allow us to pay $50/year for unlimited full-size photo storage? 3) Not enough participation by other people, though it's getting there. 4) I'll never review a Google Play app or Youtube video if I'm forced to publish everything with my real name. They should allow pseudonyms. Seriously, are there other problems? It provides fantastic value for me in the form of auto-awesome photos and the eventual integration of Google Voice. My profile is completely locked down to outsiders and unifies my Google services under a single identity. I just don't see what the problem is. At worst, it discourages participation on the Play Store and Youtube. In exchange, I get cool photo stuff and a pretty great social network. There are still improvements to be made, but I don't understand HN's antagonism. Quite frankly, G+ is welcome competition to Facebook. G+ has better design than Facebook, respects my privacy vastly more than Facebook, and provides incredibly valuable photo backup and enhancement.
jrs99 13y ago
g+ needs to succeed. if it don't, then google is done. Search with no ads is something a startup can figure out. video with no ads is something a startup can figure out.
jarsj 13y ago
There used to be someone at google who would approve every UX/UI at pixel level. She now works for Yahoo!.
eonil 13y ago
DISCLAIMER: I'm not a Google employee. This is my guess. Users doesn't make money for Google. Users are valuable only when they're in sellable state. Ad companies don't want to buy fully anonymous, bogus or false profiles. They want real personal information from real human. To increase efficiency of target reaching / marketing cost. Until now, Google didn't need to worry about quality of their product - I mean their users profiles. Because that was valuable enough. Because nobody else could provided anything better. But now it's a little bit different. Especially with Facebook. Facebook provides better product - more accurate, proven, related, real personal information. There's mostly no spamming, bogus, false account. They offer interconnected and very clearly tasted profiles. The most fantastic thing is all the informations are input by users themselves. So accuracy of the data is incredible. Google' product - user profile - is mostly tracked by usage history. So inaccurate. People refuse to input something on Google. This degrades quality of their product. To the marketers, Google product - user profiles - are now inferior. Nobody wants to buy Google product anymore. Not completely useless yet, but it's not competitive product to what Facebook provides. If this situation continues, Google has to bargain a lot, and finally will lose the only their profitable business - ad selling. Ad is not just an empty space on a website. Nowadays, you can't sell ad in high price without targeting information. Google's targeting was best in old days, but now Facebook offers even better which makes Google product crap. That's why Google is pushing everybody to their copy of Facebook - G+. To survive. By making money. G+ can make money by delivering quality user profiles to marketers. But you, the users, are just nothing if you don't offer that informations. Because without informations, your account is just an useless binary junk which can't make money. If you still love Google, please, feed them your personal information. That's the only way you can keep them (and their services) to survive. Anyway don't forget that any further marketing junks are also your responsibility. That's what you pay for Google stuff. P.S. If you think something wrong in my posting, please correct me. I also want to know if there's any other reason.
- voyou 13y ago
  "They want real personal information from real human." I don't understand why they would want that. The kind of analytics data you can get from a Google profile is much more useful to advertisers than vague demographic categories like age or location (I mean, you can guess at these categories from Google's data, but if you know that someone acts like a 23 year old woman from Austin, that's more useful for marketing purposes than knowing that they actually are a 23 year old woman from Austin).
vinitool76 13y ago
I don't get what all the fuss is all about. Why would you want to hide your identity unless you are writing something crappy or being a troll on Youtube or Play Store. A single sign-on service is a great decision and that't the way things should be when you have multiple services from same company. You guys don't mind using all services like Spotify, Quora etc that are so closely tied up with Facebook login. But when google tries to integrate it's own services it is so wrong? What are we, Hypocrites? Coming to Google+, it is a much better designed and well thought off social network. What is the whole issue about?
- redwood 13y ago
  Try thinking this through. If necessary try to imagine what it's like in others' shoes. Please try to grant this the critical evaluation it deserves.
  - vinitool76 13y ago
    I have thought about this. Don't you think that the crowd at HN just goes too hard on anything Google does? Frankly i don't feel anything wrong is have a SSO for all google apps. There are always a way to hide identity if you truly want to be anonymous. Agreed, there are some concerns as well. But again, aren't we living in an age where all our data is being sold to marketing agencies and companies. FB has been doing it since ever.
- FellowTraveler 13y ago
  "Why would you want to hide your identity unless you are writing something crappy" Yeah like if you are Mexican and you made a comment online about drug cartels, and then you were disemboweled and strung up from a bridge as a warning to others.
- shawabawa3 13y ago
  > Why would you want to hide your identity unless you are writing something crappy or being a troll on Youtube or Play Store Do people really think this? How about: Why would I NOT want to hide my identity, unless I'm writing to people I know (and they know me as my identity)?
airtonix 13y ago
How is it a disaster? I keep hearing this from people who like to peddle filth on youtube. People who love Apple, people who have no problems giving up their privacy with Facebook.
motters 13y ago
I think Google will do what Google wants to do and that there are other agendas in play. The reasonable thing would be to give people the option of uniting their different accounts for purposes of convenience, or not as they so choose.
moon_of_moon 13y ago
So really the only way to identify high quality information is by what some would call "peer reviewed, authenticated content". That means you know something about the person who generated the content and a bunch of people (who you also know something about) review it and vote it up. Thats why a large percentage of high ranked search results come from wikipedia and stack overflow/exchange and quora. LinkedIn and Facebook are leading the market in the authenticated peer reviewed content business, which is locked in to their platforms, and which search engines cannot index. Extrapolate ten years down the line, and that means a scenario where existing search engine leadership is severely compromised. And thats why the push for G+. Its do or die. tl;dr: the goal is to have search access to authenticated peer reviewed content, and to mitigate the risk of existing market leaders in that space from cannibalizing the search business, and with it the lucrative advertising business.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  the only way to identify high quality information is by what some would call "peer reviewed, authenticated content". That's not the only way. It is a method that scales. You can also identify content yourself, based on known sources (whether fully identified or pseudonymous), or based on the extant indicators within the text itself. Traditionally the issue has been resolved through editors (not necessarily peer review) who would judge content on its merits and/or the reputation of its author(s). As Clay Shirkey has noted, "it's not information overload, it's filter failure", we've moved from pre-publication filters to post-publication filters. The incentives on and for publication have also shifted, with a huge increase in low-quality information being promoted (most of what's "viral"), something I'm increasingly getting sick of. As for G+, as I've posted elsewhere (and Homer Slated points out very eloquently in a recent post), Google's formerly razor-sharp relevance algorithms are becoming increasingly vague. It's to the point it's becoming highly obvious to me, and it's very painfully manifested on G+ specifically. Some of this might be attributed to SEO gaming of search, but tool design and selectin (see "What's Hot" and the extremely limited search and noise controls on G+) make me increasingly think it's deliberate.
lazyjones 13y ago
I'm waiting for a Twitter video platform to settle these issues once and for all ... Google really needs more competition where users feel they are forced to do things because they have no choice.
- alextingle 13y ago
  That would be awesome.
djvu9 13y ago
I guess the real reason could be that they try to sell ads on YouTube to advertisers with a competitive rate (compared to popular episodes) because they now can reach the targeted audience directly. The integration is somehow a "solid" evidence to advertisers.
shadowmint 13y ago
Don't be silly; that would violate the 'do not discuss this topic' order...
rcjordan 13y ago
The current crop of Youtube commentors are the target of this purge, not collateral damage. Big G's high$$ advertisers aren't interested in being associated with free-form comments.
powera 13y ago
This question should really be "VicG and Larry: why is G+ more important than your users".
dewiz 13y ago
Something that Google fails to understand, is that the company unifying the authentication experience cannot be the same company unifying the web experience. I like having one authentication service provider, but I cannot have this provider holding hostage my services, my data, my history etc. In this sense Microsoft is better, because they focus more on the product and less on the identity (since the business model is around licenses this makes sense). However this could change soon... Bing, Office365 etc. If Google wants to win this battle they need to allow users to expose themselves with nicknames at least, different names per service even. Internally they will have their unique ID to which they can attach their marketing business model. However, I will still feel something is wrong about one company knowing so much about me.
erikb 13y ago
(not a G employee as well) I scrolled through all the comments and at least in the first line I didn't see this yet, so I add it to this thread: Why does <X> piss of it's users? (doesn't need to be the big G) A) Mostly people are using services that they don't pay for. But the service must be awesome. This kind of user is not so attractive to competitive, profitable companies. They don't add much but they cost much time, trouble, energy, money. If these users go away no company really bothers, even if these are 90% of the users. (keep in mind, I'm one of these troublesome users) B.) Users that actually pay might not be unhappy with the results. E.g. a company that buys advertisement space from google will not mind if Google processes the user information more efficiently. Also a Google business account owner will not mind that his employees can't watch Youtube videos from his account that would be shameful to show publicly. Therefore I think the bigger part of the interesting cutomers might actually approve of the current changes. C) Most users have not much power. They can basically choose between service A and service B but often both services exploit their users the same way (see G+ and FB). So even if they are annoyed as hell they might not even go away. Now I'm really one of the people who is unhappy with Google as it is, but I think there are some very good reasons for them to do it.
dspeyer 13y ago
Former Googler here. The vast majority of Googlers do not approve of G+ policies. However, Google has never been run democratically and most of the time that's probably a good thing. Furthermore, the management has been much less forthcoming than usual about the thinking behind these policies. What they have said varies and usually sounds like excuses. In short, don't expect actual information in this thread.
- zaidf 13y ago
  The vast majority of Googlers do not approve of G+ policies. For me, this is the most critical statement in the entire Google+ saga. Most Google employees do not approve of a strategy that google is betting its future on. Has this ever happened before? Probably never before. And to me, it marks a clear beginning of the end of google as we knew it. The google we grew up loving was a google that put product quality before anything else. Everything else(such as market share) was a result of a good product. This is no longer true.
  - dspeyer 13y ago
    > Most Google employees do not approve of a strategy that google is betting its future on. Has this ever happened before? It was before my time, but I'm told acquiring youtube was unpopular. That seems to have worked out. I doubt it was as unpopular, though, and there was a lot less bet on it.
  - nostrademons 13y ago
    GMail and Instant both had significant internal resistance, as did several projects that were (rightfully, IMHO) canned. Meanwhile, Wave and Buzz were beloved by Googlers. Much as it pains me to admit that I'm not omniscient, there are ample examples of products where the majority Googler consensus does not reflect the majority market consensus. There are also ample examples of products where the initial market consensus doesn't reflect the final market consensus. (For example, Chrome was beloved internally by Googlers, but was met with a lot of external skepticism when it launched, and then eventually became the dominant browser.)
rhizome 13y ago
These threads are already huge, but I'll take a bite. I don't think it's G+ being more important than the users, I think it has more to do with YouTube. Currently, G+ is for nerds who care about anonymity and all the other things that Google is being criticized here. That's fine, I'm one of them. However, YouTube is a shithole and it's likely that YT people don't care as much about what they sign into as long as all their stuff is there. That Google would try to move YT users on to G+ makes sense in a "slum clearance[1]" way. The Real Name vs. Nicknymity thing is a real problem, and for me I don't think Google is handling right, but I do think they're handling it in a way that is not out of line with the values of a stereotypical corporate bureaucracy. Google wants to know the real names of everybody on its services, I get that, but users who value theirs and others' internet identity do so regardless of whether it's under a real name or a nickname. That Google has been found to be getting back alley sex from the US Government does not help their case for knowing who you really are. In my more cynical moments I think comments and such are a ruse to get more PII from their users for law enforcement purposes. But YT is also a shithole, and the ad rates against combined-identity demographics ain't sour neither. 1. http://freakonomics.com/2011/09/30/the-controversial-legacy-of-slum-clearance/ http://freakonomics.com/2011/09/30/the-controversial-legacy-...
judk 13y ago
G+ leadership thinks the internet is for brand management for bloggers, photographers, etc. They aren't being sadistic, they are simply generalizing from their own experience ad successful public strivers. Personal private use is simply irrelevant to them. And you know, maybe it wasted time and the world would be better if people stopped having anonymous debates that don't win over any minds. Google doesn't run cafes and bars, and they don't run reddit, and they don't want to. They aren't trying to kill Reddit. HNers write their blog posts and seek discussion here instead of in the blog's comments. Redditors can post YouTube videos and discuss them on /r/videos
DanBC 13y ago
Reading this thread I see some confusion about what YouTube and Google require with G+ account linking. HN is full of smart people who work with tech all day every day. Imagine what it's like for the average person trying to create a YouTube channel but trying to avoid leaking too much information to the creeps. It's weird to me that Google would make things tricky for content creators on Youtube. These aren't people posting cat videos, these are people who are trying to build a brand and who spend time and money creating original content - some of it is "let's play" style video, or vlogging, but some of it is young people creating music video and sharing it. Pissing off those people leaves YouTube a wasteland of cat videos, adverts off the telly, and chopped up tv programmes posted without permission. Google can make lots of money off that, but it's a shame they don't want the original content.
mcculley 13y ago
If you reframe this question as "Why are your customers more important than your users?" it has an obvious answer.
meerita 13y ago
I'm sure this is not developers fault. I'm sure it's management.

353 points by dsl 13y ago

I would love to hear how Google pitches G+ and the disaster that is Youtube at this point internally. How do they keep morale up?

adamnemecek 13y ago

Somehow I don't think that someone who is a cog in the machine has much say in this.

natch 13y ago
Maybe he/she is asking the non-cogs. Let's see if they speak up forthrightly, or give us another faux surprise "what the..." post.

yuhong 13y ago

This article that was submitted to HN had a section on Vic Gundotra that should have clues: http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2013/09/20/sex_and_politics_at_google_it_s_a_game_of_thrones_in_mountain_view.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2013/09/20/sex_a...

morgante 13y ago
Original: http://www.businessinsider.com/sex-and-politics-at-google-its-a-game-of-thrones-in-mountain-view-2013-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/sex-and-politics-at-google-it...
yuhong 13y ago
HN submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6420546 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6420546

jmduke 13y ago

So I don't work for Google and I've never worked for Google. I do, however, have two things you might want to keep in mind: 1. Google, according to Wikipedia, has 46,000 employees. The number of employees who are in a position to influence policy regarding Google+ adoption over the Google suite of products is likely less than one hundred (or .2%). It is entirely possible -- likely, even! -- that the other 99.8% of those employees do not agree with the Google+ strategy. It is also entirely possible -- likely, even! -- that those employees are encouraged to voice their opinions internally (though voicing those opinions externally doesn't really accomplish anything extra.) 2. You can disagree with Google's tactics, motives, and end-goals, but I'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn't believe that the average Google employee is very intelligent. It is entirely possible -- likely, even! -- that one of these employees did a cost-benefit analysis somewhere along the line (likely before Google+ was released to the public) and discovered that the cost of pushing an umbrella identity (pissing off users, possibly lowering retention and engagement) is outweighed by the benefits of such a strategy (attracting 'whale' consumers, strengthening advertising profiles for consumers).

RodericDay 13y ago
I don't know what you were thinking when you added those interjections to every other sentence but this post is condescending as hell.
- javert 13y ago
  I didn't take it that way, for some reason. I interpreted them as friendly, and I thought they were helpful in making what I think is a very good point.
  - xarball 13y ago
    I write like that on occasion. Pretty sure it's because my thought process isn't like a linear story. It's more like a series of contextually leveled bullets -- each inner statement adding some useful (albeit sometimes unnecessary!) information to the overall discourse. I can assure you that people who write like that don't mean to be intimidating or rude. They're probably just trying to leave no gap unexplored! (Much like how programmers have to think!)
- jmduke 13y ago
  I honestly wasn't trying to be condescending, and apologize if it came off that way. (I'll leave the original post unedited so it doesn't look like you're crazy or anything.) That being said, Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users? is an incredibly loaded question and I think my tone might have stemmed from that.
  - Dylan16807 13y ago
    >That being said, Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users? is an incredibly loaded question and I think my tone might have stemmed from that. It doesn't seem very loaded to me. The implication is simply that G+ is bad. Nothing more. That's a reasonable implication for someone to make. It's not a 'have you stopped beating your wife' type of question.

yuhong 13y ago

There is also a dead comment by Gthrowaway1 in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6732425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6732425

psbp 13y ago
What are you linking to? The only comment about what Gthrowaway1 said is about Gthrowaway1 deleting the comment.
- yuhong 13y ago
  Turn on showdead then scroll down to the bottom.
  - psbp 13y ago
    I see, I've heard Vic is notorious for forcing his own products. But if it's truly an issue, why does Larry allow Vic to exercise so much control? It sounds like the entire executive staff is to blame.
    - yuhong 13y ago
      That is why I posted another comment with a link you should read.
    - o0-0o 13y ago
      Vivek is from India. Vic is his American name. Just sayin'.
- r0h1n 13y ago
  I'm not sure if reproducing a dead comment violates some kind of unwritten HN guideline, but here it is: =============================================== Gthrowaway1 2 days ago | link [dead] The Google bashing is well deserved. Even people at Google despise Vic Gundotra (just check memegen.googleplex.com today), yet this incompetent figure is allowed to continue alienating users and driving Google's brand into the ground. Vic, do us a favor: Go back to Microsoft and never return! Disclaimer: I work for Google.

googlemployee1 13y ago

I work pretty high up at Google, and I (obviously) made this account to post in this thread. Google is effectively "dead" in my opinion, and this mirrors (at least in my experience) the feelings of many of our other higher-ups who are concerned with technology rather than the business. Everything has stagnated, it's no longer fun to work here, and it's entirely about making money now. The claims that we don't bend over for government agencies is entirely bullshit. Most of what they wanted was done without question (though I can't say how much of a choice we had). The company will continue, but you'll see us fall out of style, in a similar fashion to what has happened to Microsoft.

datahipster 13y ago
Can you provide some proof as to "work[ing] pretty high up at Google"? Just curious.
psbp 13y ago
Sorry if this is true, but it seems too vague and brash to be authentic. Can you describe in more detail what's wrong with google at the moment?
davidjgraph 13y ago
So they said no in the interview, huh? Let's not feed the trolls, yeah?
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
wrongc0ntinent 13y ago
Wouldn't be surprised if this was true. On their other hand, there's a 4chan thread on the front page :)
BorisMelnik 13y ago
nothing new said here.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

nostromo 13y ago

It seems simple, honestly. The likelihood that people will stop using YouTube because of G+ is nil.

brink 13y ago
I use it a lot less, tbh.
nacs 13y ago
It's quite the opposite for me. I've started moving my stuff off of Google as this was one of the last straws in my book. I'd already switched to using DDG and Startpage for my searches and am currently in the process of moving my Google apps email to my own server. When that's done I plan on deleting my Youtube and Google accounts. This latest Google+ push has made me realize just how far Google is willing to go to capture more data on their users instead of focusing on providing the best service possible as they used to.
- pavs 13y ago
  You are not a target user for google products and services, thats why they are not too worried about how you or users like you feel about it. See also: Facebook. A lot of noise was made about facebook privacy (inside the HN and other tech eco chambers) and a lot of noise was made about people quitting facebook because of privacy. But in reality probably only .00000001% of facebook users probably quit because of privacy reasons, which is probably a drop in a bucket compare to the amount of new users they get everyday. Google is doing this because they can. They are in a market dominant position with both youtube and Google search that they can afford to make decision, which in hindsight might not be popular with some users, but will close to nothing to harm their bottom line.
  - denzil_correa 13y ago
    > But in reality probably only .00000001% of facebook users probably quit because of privacy reasons, which is probably a drop in a bucket compare to the amount of new users they get everyday. Normalization is a tricky job. Your assumption is that the entire set of users were aware of privacy problems with Facebook. Out of the universal set of Facebook users, there would be two subsets - people aware of privacy problems and their ill effects and people who don't. You should check "how many people quit (or significantly reduced activity on) Facebook, once they found out about privacy issues and their effects" and then report the percentage.

s-topper 13y ago

YouTube comments were already a cesspool. Now, with added "shared via Google+", it has become unbearable. I added this rule in AdBlockPlus to block YouTube comments: youtube.com###watch-discussion

tasoeur 13y ago

From what I heard from Google employees, G+ has been highly prioritized over many projects (and some others which closed like google lab, reader, etc.). Facing the social network giant that is Facebook, G+ has to become successful after many past failures, and to do so, they try to force their way through, and make it ubiquitous. However, this Youtube chapter was probably a step too far, since very intrusive and noticeable.

gkoberger 13y ago

In addition to what other people have said: Googlers love Google Plus. I haven't met a Googler (and, I know many) that doesn't love it. After all, for them, it's not a barren wasteland. They have a very active network (coworkers/friends). I don't think this answers your question, however most Googlers like G+.

nostromo 13y ago
It's a much better product than Facebook. But a better social product means nothing without an active network of users.
- Geee 13y ago
  Better in what way? G+ has confusing and horrible interface, it's slow, and keeps asking me to import friends every single time I open up the page. That's not 'better product' in my opinion.
  - cromwellian 13y ago
    Better photos experience, better media embedding, better commenting (until Facebook later copied G+), better search, simpler privacy control system, better notification drop down, better mobile app, etc Asking to import and nag dialogues, I agree. They need to stop that.
  - wyclif 13y ago
    Compared to Facebook, it's beautifully designed.
    - dredmorbius 13y ago
      That ... actually makes me wince a bit. For the Facebookers. http://stylebot.me/styles/2446 http://stylebot.me/styles/2446 That's what it took for me to be able to tolerate the Plus.
- acdha 13y ago

jmillikin 13y ago

Internally, G+ is marketed as a unified login/account system. Management's stated reasoning goes something like: * It's silly to force users to have separate accounts for Google services because most users would prefer to have Gmail, Docs/Drive, YouTube, Calendar, and so on under the same account/identity. * Users who want to have separate public identities will create pseudonymous "Pages" for each of their identities. These pages will still be owned by the same account, so the user only has to log in once. * Users who are strongly opposed to a unified Google account are a sufficiently small population that it is acceptable to inconvenience them if doing so improves the experience of every other user. By itself, these arguments are reasonable and could probably have been implemented without too much trouble (though "Pages" continues to be a confusing and unclear term). The problem is that the new account system was introduced at the exact same time as a social network, with the /same name/, and that the social network decided to inject a hard requirement of Facebook-style name validation rules into the new profile system. Now the term "Google+" has become so strongly connected with the Google+ social network (and its infamous names policy) that any attempt to expand the Google+ account system is met with fear and outrage. I don't think upper management expected this or understands why the community reacted thus, just as they didn't expect or understand why requiring a Firstname Lastname format on the Internet was problematic. I don't believe Google+ management is malicious, but they do seem woefully unaware of how internet-native communities behave.

danbmil99 13y ago
You know a company has jumped shark when employees start explanations for their behavior with a phrase like "Management's stated reasoning goes something like:"
- jmillikin 13y ago
  I believe that many internet flame wars are caused by inaccurate or imprecise statements. It is important to me to indicate the source and quality of information that I post. What would you have written?
  - 13y ago

joeld42 13y ago

Not a google employee, but here's my take. It seems like value in web ecosystem is changing from "views" to "verbs" -- like, share, etc.. actions that spread content rather than passively consuming it. Google has based its business on monetizing "views" and its competitors (fb) are building on verbs. Also, Google has to maintain a forest of separate identities for everyone. (youtube, gmail, g+, etc). It's super annoying just to maintain one login. There's huge business value in consolidating those, even without adding features. Finally, Youtube comments are a cesspool. Even when they're not racist or threatening, they're immature and, at best "wow that's awesome". They drive viewers away. I bet google wants to try to do-over comments in a way that makes them useful to people, not unsettling. And I would hesitate to call it a disaster. Sure there's a lot of whining about it now, especially in tech circles, but every big interface change comes with a wave of whiners. We'll see in three or four weeks if anyone is complaining. They'd certainly have a much tougher time doing this if there were another option for the masses, but for most people YouTube is it. Saying people are going to quit watching or uploading to youtube is silly, they'll go where? Vimeo? They're going to keep tweaking it, people are going to adapt and learn, videos of cats falling off objects will continue to be uploaded. ps: "How do they keep morale up"? Free food and big piles of money. How else do you do it?

jrockway 13y ago

I have no idea what the official party line is... but doesn't it make at least a little bit of sense to unify two social networks owned by the same company? One thought about real names: what does your contacts database look like on your phone? While I know a lot of people by their online handles, I also know their real name, and I typically choose to enter that real name into my phone. Maybe this is uncommon, but if not, if you're building a communication platform, it does make some sense for the user-entered data to follow this format. Is there some intrinsic reason that someone be referred to as "Jonathan Rockway" when you send them a message via the SMS protocol, but "jrockway" if you send that same message via Jabber? It then follows to wonder: if you're talking to your friends via YouTube, why would you use yet another nickname? Maybe what people want is a unique identifier that only they know, and then choose to share a different name with different groups of people? I don't have any strong feelings one way or the other, but I am interested in what other people have to say.

alayne 13y ago
Google has owned youtube for 7 years and this year they decided to mess with people. Why?
- jrockway 13y ago
  Probably a combination of: having the idea, having the right infrastructure, and having a team of engineers to write the code and migrate the data.
dizzystar 13y ago
>> While I know a lot of people by their online handles, I also know their real name, This can't possibly be true. I easily interact with 100+ people on various platforms. I don't know any of their names. I consider them "friends" in a way, but their real names are wholly irrelevant to me. >> if you're talking to your friends via YouTube No... You are having a discussion about the video. This is certainly not your friends. You can argue this, but if everyone is friends talking to each other, why are there still so many people willing to blatantly troll people they obviously don't know? I'm not sure what world you are painting, but this does not reflect any reality I am aware of.

libovness 13y ago

Don't forget that one of the tacit reasons for G+'s existence is simply to have a reason to encourage G+ buttons on each page for further tracking of what's happening on the internet. Using a single identity helps to reconcile a unique user that help both the advertiser reach "uniques" and for Google to better understand that user's behavior. Back to the point: Google's ethos is to track and analyze as much of what's happening on the Internet as possible. If, as an employee, you don't appreciate that this is Google's bread and butter, you simply may not care enough about these things to ever get worked up about G+'s account management.

jmillikin 13y ago
From https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1319578 https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1319578 : > The +1 button isn’t used to track your visits across the web. > Google doesn’t keep a persistent record of your browsing > history as part of the process of showing you a +1 button or > otherwise use the fact that you personally have visited a page > with the +1 button.
- joeyo 13y ago
  Okay, so the mere _presence_ of the +1 button in a browser doesn't track visits across the web. But when you press the button, "Google receives information about your Google profile, the URL you +1, your IP address, and other browser-related information."
  - humbledrone 13y ago
    If you click the button, it lights up in red and also shows up in the +1's tab on your plus.google.com profile (which you can make public or private). Since the +1 button is served from Google's servers and displayed via an iframe, Google of course receives client information when you click it. You're making a request to Google's servers.
    - joeyo 13y ago
      It sounds like we're saying the same thing. I just was pointing out that this is all entirely consistent with the entire point of G+ being the "further tracking of what's happening on the internet."

amasad 13y ago

I'd be more concerned when they start forcing G+ on open platforms like the Web and Android. Maybe it's already started with Android KitKat shipping with Hangouts as the default messaging app.

TheLegace 13y ago
The worst part is I can't even disable it if I am using my another SMS app, so now I have to clear two notifications for my text message and 50% of the time I usually end up in the Hangouts app where I don't want to be. When will this madness stop?
- tjohns 13y ago
  Your other SMS app is broken needs to update to the new API that was introduced in KitKat, which should fix both problems: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2013/10/getting-your-sms-apps-ready-for-kitkat.html http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2013/10/getting-your-... Intercepting SMS required using a hidden API before. Now it's an officially supported feature.
  - TheLegace 13y ago
    My apologies then. I will contact the app developer.
tjohns 13y ago
As mentioned in my other reply here, KitKat added an API which explicitly lets users change their default SMS app. The way apps did it in the past required using a hidden API and wasn't guaranteed to work. No conspiracy theories necessary. :)

mcphilip 13y ago

Not a google employee, but this disgusting mistreatment of its users may actually be a good thing if it blows up in their faces. My prediction is that the change to automatically showing the users g+ profile pic next to comments will be what gets them in hot water by empowering stalkers and trolls. Here's a simple example, if you go to the video for Miley Cyrus - Wrecking Ball, there are the usual back and forth comments arguing her merits. However, you can now easily spot preteen girls if you were looking for that specific demographic, and then subscribe to them for more efficient creeping. Shame on Google. This behavior is stunningly evil.

minwcnt5 13y ago
What? Hasn't G+ always showed profile pics next to comments? I don't understand why that would suddenly become a problem just because it's now enabled on YT too. It only makes stalking easier in the sense that there's a greater volume of comments to stalk.
- mcphilip 13y ago
  The point is that it makes stalking much more efficient and there's no way to protect oneself from it on YouTube without changing the profile pic. The current #1 submission on HN is from a woman slamming google for this problem [1]. On the YouTube side the poster of the current top comment on the Miley Cyrus video is getting hostile replies based on the profile pic being of a very young girl. [1]https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z12gzxkxvpvautd3d231ylly2oyrtzjlb https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z12gzxkxvpvautd3d23...
  - minwcnt5 13y ago
    If you read the comments on that post or the HN thread you would see that you can link your YT identity to a G+ "page", where you can set the name and profile pic to whatever you want. It sounds like your real issue is with the fact they haven't made this more widely known, or part of the conversion flow. Your original complaint still makes no sense to me and just reads like more of the same knee/circle-jerk reaction.

MrBra 13y ago

I am very positive this would be the perfect moment to start a kickstarer funded youtube clone! Yea, glad I inspired your next big project, thank me later! (But please don't forget to... I know you won't if you are a good hacker. I am not in the position to dedicate any time/resources to this project. Please ask me for some contact info when you are sure you will be diving into this. Please do it, and... good luck!)

Narkov 13y ago

Users != customers. Customers > users.

davidgerard 13y ago
To be fair, even Google's paying customers get really pissed off at being treated like the users.

mohamedmansour 13y ago

Ever since Google has been integrating all their services to Google+, I have been using Google differently now: 1) Anonymous or no commenting on YouTube 2) Using Windows 8.1 Mail app to access Gmail. Because seeing that Google+ notification icon is distracting and annoying me 3) Stopped rating apps on Google Play store 4) Stopped contributing reviews to Local 5) Trying to stop using Google's Web products in favor of apps instead because of that damn Notifications bar. I understand using a single Google Account for all services, but linking them all to one service where that service acts as a Social Network is not a service I would want to use anymore. They acquired Meeboo bar, and it seems they want every service they own have that bar and I despised that bar. Totally the wrong direction to take. Treating each service separately would have been better and giving the option to the user to show that bar would have been great.

gobbluth 13y ago

Not a Google employee, just a satisfied member. As far as I can tell, these are the following flaws with G+: 1) It's idiotic that my URL must be FirstnameLastname1234. 2) GDrive storage (which I use to upload 2000px G+ photos) is unfortunately expensive when compared to Everpix's unlimited storage. Everpix would have been quite profitable at G+'s scale, too. If Google invested this much in photo enhancement services, why not allow us to pay $50/year for unlimited full-size photo storage? 3) Not enough participation by other people, though it's getting there. 4) I'll never review a Google Play app or Youtube video if I'm forced to publish everything with my real name. They should allow pseudonyms. Seriously, are there other problems? It provides fantastic value for me in the form of auto-awesome photos and the eventual integration of Google Voice. My profile is completely locked down to outsiders and unifies my Google services under a single identity. I just don't see what the problem is. At worst, it discourages participation on the Play Store and Youtube. In exchange, I get cool photo stuff and a pretty great social network. There are still improvements to be made, but I don't understand HN's antagonism. Quite frankly, G+ is welcome competition to Facebook. G+ has better design than Facebook, respects my privacy vastly more than Facebook, and provides incredibly valuable photo backup and enhancement.

jrs99 13y ago

g+ needs to succeed. if it don't, then google is done. Search with no ads is something a startup can figure out. video with no ads is something a startup can figure out.

jarsj 13y ago

There used to be someone at google who would approve every UX/UI at pixel level. She now works for Yahoo!.

eonil 13y ago

DISCLAIMER: I'm not a Google employee. This is my guess. Users doesn't make money for Google. Users are valuable only when they're in sellable state. Ad companies don't want to buy fully anonymous, bogus or false profiles. They want real personal information from real human. To increase efficiency of target reaching / marketing cost. Until now, Google didn't need to worry about quality of their product - I mean their users profiles. Because that was valuable enough. Because nobody else could provided anything better. But now it's a little bit different. Especially with Facebook. Facebook provides better product - more accurate, proven, related, real personal information. There's mostly no spamming, bogus, false account. They offer interconnected and very clearly tasted profiles. The most fantastic thing is all the informations are input by users themselves. So accuracy of the data is incredible. Google' product - user profile - is mostly tracked by usage history. So inaccurate. People refuse to input something on Google. This degrades quality of their product. To the marketers, Google product - user profiles - are now inferior. Nobody wants to buy Google product anymore. Not completely useless yet, but it's not competitive product to what Facebook provides. If this situation continues, Google has to bargain a lot, and finally will lose the only their profitable business - ad selling. Ad is not just an empty space on a website. Nowadays, you can't sell ad in high price without targeting information. Google's targeting was best in old days, but now Facebook offers even better which makes Google product crap. That's why Google is pushing everybody to their copy of Facebook - G+. To survive. By making money. G+ can make money by delivering quality user profiles to marketers. But you, the users, are just nothing if you don't offer that informations. Because without informations, your account is just an useless binary junk which can't make money. If you still love Google, please, feed them your personal information. That's the only way you can keep them (and their services) to survive. Anyway don't forget that any further marketing junks are also your responsibility. That's what you pay for Google stuff. P.S. If you think something wrong in my posting, please correct me. I also want to know if there's any other reason.

voyou 13y ago
"They want real personal information from real human." I don't understand why they would want that. The kind of analytics data you can get from a Google profile is much more useful to advertisers than vague demographic categories like age or location (I mean, you can guess at these categories from Google's data, but if you know that someone acts like a 23 year old woman from Austin, that's more useful for marketing purposes than knowing that they actually are a 23 year old woman from Austin).

vinitool76 13y ago

I don't get what all the fuss is all about. Why would you want to hide your identity unless you are writing something crappy or being a troll on Youtube or Play Store. A single sign-on service is a great decision and that't the way things should be when you have multiple services from same company. You guys don't mind using all services like Spotify, Quora etc that are so closely tied up with Facebook login. But when google tries to integrate it's own services it is so wrong? What are we, Hypocrites? Coming to Google+, it is a much better designed and well thought off social network. What is the whole issue about?

redwood 13y ago
Try thinking this through. If necessary try to imagine what it's like in others' shoes. Please try to grant this the critical evaluation it deserves.
- vinitool76 13y ago
  I have thought about this. Don't you think that the crowd at HN just goes too hard on anything Google does? Frankly i don't feel anything wrong is have a SSO for all google apps. There are always a way to hide identity if you truly want to be anonymous. Agreed, there are some concerns as well. But again, aren't we living in an age where all our data is being sold to marketing agencies and companies. FB has been doing it since ever.
FellowTraveler 13y ago
"Why would you want to hide your identity unless you are writing something crappy" Yeah like if you are Mexican and you made a comment online about drug cartels, and then you were disemboweled and strung up from a bridge as a warning to others.
shawabawa3 13y ago
> Why would you want to hide your identity unless you are writing something crappy or being a troll on Youtube or Play Store Do people really think this? How about: Why would I NOT want to hide my identity, unless I'm writing to people I know (and they know me as my identity)?

airtonix 13y ago

How is it a disaster? I keep hearing this from people who like to peddle filth on youtube. People who love Apple, people who have no problems giving up their privacy with Facebook.

motters 13y ago

I think Google will do what Google wants to do and that there are other agendas in play. The reasonable thing would be to give people the option of uniting their different accounts for purposes of convenience, or not as they so choose.

moon_of_moon 13y ago

So really the only way to identify high quality information is by what some would call "peer reviewed, authenticated content". That means you know something about the person who generated the content and a bunch of people (who you also know something about) review it and vote it up. Thats why a large percentage of high ranked search results come from wikipedia and stack overflow/exchange and quora. LinkedIn and Facebook are leading the market in the authenticated peer reviewed content business, which is locked in to their platforms, and which search engines cannot index. Extrapolate ten years down the line, and that means a scenario where existing search engine leadership is severely compromised. And thats why the push for G+. Its do or die. tl;dr: the goal is to have search access to authenticated peer reviewed content, and to mitigate the risk of existing market leaders in that space from cannibalizing the search business, and with it the lucrative advertising business.

dredmorbius 13y ago
the only way to identify high quality information is by what some would call "peer reviewed, authenticated content". That's not the only way. It is a method that scales. You can also identify content yourself, based on known sources (whether fully identified or pseudonymous), or based on the extant indicators within the text itself. Traditionally the issue has been resolved through editors (not necessarily peer review) who would judge content on its merits and/or the reputation of its author(s). As Clay Shirkey has noted, "it's not information overload, it's filter failure", we've moved from pre-publication filters to post-publication filters. The incentives on and for publication have also shifted, with a huge increase in low-quality information being promoted (most of what's "viral"), something I'm increasingly getting sick of. As for G+, as I've posted elsewhere (and Homer Slated points out very eloquently in a recent post), Google's formerly razor-sharp relevance algorithms are becoming increasingly vague. It's to the point it's becoming highly obvious to me, and it's very painfully manifested on G+ specifically. Some of this might be attributed to SEO gaming of search, but tool design and selectin (see "What's Hot" and the extremely limited search and noise controls on G+) make me increasingly think it's deliberate.

lazyjones 13y ago

I'm waiting for a Twitter video platform to settle these issues once and for all ... Google really needs more competition where users feel they are forced to do things because they have no choice.

alextingle 13y ago
That would be awesome.

djvu9 13y ago

I guess the real reason could be that they try to sell ads on YouTube to advertisers with a competitive rate (compared to popular episodes) because they now can reach the targeted audience directly. The integration is somehow a "solid" evidence to advertisers.

shadowmint 13y ago

Don't be silly; that would violate the 'do not discuss this topic' order...

rcjordan 13y ago

The current crop of Youtube commentors are the target of this purge, not collateral damage. Big G's high$$ advertisers aren't interested in being associated with free-form comments.

powera 13y ago

This question should really be "VicG and Larry: why is G+ more important than your users".

dewiz 13y ago

Something that Google fails to understand, is that the company unifying the authentication experience cannot be the same company unifying the web experience. I like having one authentication service provider, but I cannot have this provider holding hostage my services, my data, my history etc. In this sense Microsoft is better, because they focus more on the product and less on the identity (since the business model is around licenses this makes sense). However this could change soon... Bing, Office365 etc. If Google wants to win this battle they need to allow users to expose themselves with nicknames at least, different names per service even. Internally they will have their unique ID to which they can attach their marketing business model. However, I will still feel something is wrong about one company knowing so much about me.

erikb 13y ago

(not a G employee as well) I scrolled through all the comments and at least in the first line I didn't see this yet, so I add it to this thread: Why does <X> piss of it's users? (doesn't need to be the big G) A) Mostly people are using services that they don't pay for. But the service must be awesome. This kind of user is not so attractive to competitive, profitable companies. They don't add much but they cost much time, trouble, energy, money. If these users go away no company really bothers, even if these are 90% of the users. (keep in mind, I'm one of these troublesome users) B.) Users that actually pay might not be unhappy with the results. E.g. a company that buys advertisement space from google will not mind if Google processes the user information more efficiently. Also a Google business account owner will not mind that his employees can't watch Youtube videos from his account that would be shameful to show publicly. Therefore I think the bigger part of the interesting cutomers might actually approve of the current changes. C) Most users have not much power. They can basically choose between service A and service B but often both services exploit their users the same way (see G+ and FB). So even if they are annoyed as hell they might not even go away. Now I'm really one of the people who is unhappy with Google as it is, but I think there are some very good reasons for them to do it.

dspeyer 13y ago

Former Googler here. The vast majority of Googlers do not approve of G+ policies. However, Google has never been run democratically and most of the time that's probably a good thing. Furthermore, the management has been much less forthcoming than usual about the thinking behind these policies. What they have said varies and usually sounds like excuses. In short, don't expect actual information in this thread.

zaidf 13y ago
The vast majority of Googlers do not approve of G+ policies. For me, this is the most critical statement in the entire Google+ saga. Most Google employees do not approve of a strategy that google is betting its future on. Has this ever happened before? Probably never before. And to me, it marks a clear beginning of the end of google as we knew it. The google we grew up loving was a google that put product quality before anything else. Everything else(such as market share) was a result of a good product. This is no longer true.
- dspeyer 13y ago
  > Most Google employees do not approve of a strategy that google is betting its future on. Has this ever happened before? It was before my time, but I'm told acquiring youtube was unpopular. That seems to have worked out. I doubt it was as unpopular, though, and there was a lot less bet on it.
- nostrademons 13y ago
  GMail and Instant both had significant internal resistance, as did several projects that were (rightfully, IMHO) canned. Meanwhile, Wave and Buzz were beloved by Googlers. Much as it pains me to admit that I'm not omniscient, there are ample examples of products where the majority Googler consensus does not reflect the majority market consensus. There are also ample examples of products where the initial market consensus doesn't reflect the final market consensus. (For example, Chrome was beloved internally by Googlers, but was met with a lot of external skepticism when it launched, and then eventually became the dominant browser.)

rhizome 13y ago

These threads are already huge, but I'll take a bite. I don't think it's G+ being more important than the users, I think it has more to do with YouTube. Currently, G+ is for nerds who care about anonymity and all the other things that Google is being criticized here. That's fine, I'm one of them. However, YouTube is a shithole and it's likely that YT people don't care as much about what they sign into as long as all their stuff is there. That Google would try to move YT users on to G+ makes sense in a "slum clearance[1]" way. The Real Name vs. Nicknymity thing is a real problem, and for me I don't think Google is handling right, but I do think they're handling it in a way that is not out of line with the values of a stereotypical corporate bureaucracy. Google wants to know the real names of everybody on its services, I get that, but users who value theirs and others' internet identity do so regardless of whether it's under a real name or a nickname. That Google has been found to be getting back alley sex from the US Government does not help their case for knowing who you really are. In my more cynical moments I think comments and such are a ruse to get more PII from their users for law enforcement purposes. But YT is also a shithole, and the ad rates against combined-identity demographics ain't sour neither. 1. http://freakonomics.com/2011/09/30/the-controversial-legacy-of-slum-clearance/ http://freakonomics.com/2011/09/30/the-controversial-legacy-...

judk 13y ago

G+ leadership thinks the internet is for brand management for bloggers, photographers, etc. They aren't being sadistic, they are simply generalizing from their own experience ad successful public strivers. Personal private use is simply irrelevant to them. And you know, maybe it wasted time and the world would be better if people stopped having anonymous debates that don't win over any minds. Google doesn't run cafes and bars, and they don't run reddit, and they don't want to. They aren't trying to kill Reddit. HNers write their blog posts and seek discussion here instead of in the blog's comments. Redditors can post YouTube videos and discuss them on /r/videos

DanBC 13y ago

Reading this thread I see some confusion about what YouTube and Google require with G+ account linking. HN is full of smart people who work with tech all day every day. Imagine what it's like for the average person trying to create a YouTube channel but trying to avoid leaking too much information to the creeps. It's weird to me that Google would make things tricky for content creators on Youtube. These aren't people posting cat videos, these are people who are trying to build a brand and who spend time and money creating original content - some of it is "let's play" style video, or vlogging, but some of it is young people creating music video and sharing it. Pissing off those people leaves YouTube a wasteland of cat videos, adverts off the telly, and chopped up tv programmes posted without permission. Google can make lots of money off that, but it's a shame they don't want the original content.

mcculley 13y ago

If you reframe this question as "Why are your customers more important than your users?" it has an obvious answer.

meerita 13y ago

I'm sure this is not developers fault. I'm sure it's management.