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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
by 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 agoI 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 agoI 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 agoI 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 agoI 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.
- bigiain 13y agoOr the other obvious interpretation is - they place pretty much zero value on their users (or perhaps even a negative value on those whiny privacy conscious tech-crowd users that hang out on commie un-monetized sites like HN…).
- Dylan16807 13y agoThat's a very strange interpretation to me. They clearly care a lot about G+. So why would saying G+ > users imply that the value of users is small?
- jkrems 13y agoBecause the title implies that Google does not think that G+ is something users would want. There are people who genuinely like G+ and maybe even think it's awesome that YouTube now is so tightly integrated with it. So a title implying that Google did G+ because they wanted to exploit ad dollars from users without caring about the users themselves, IS a "did you stop hitting your wife"-like question.
- 13y ago
- konspence 13y agoIt was possibly - likely, even! - a botched use of classical rhetoric.
- igravious 13y agoIt is quite possible - likely, even even! - that this rhetorical flourish is contagious, habit-forming and memetic.
- maxerickson 13y agonah.
- iancarroll 13y agoIt's quite possible -- likely, even! -- that you used that interjection a bit much.