17 ms·

Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

402 points by mikegreenspan 12y ago

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- kingnight 12y ago
  Google+ should have launched secretly and conservatively, instead of big announcement and smash/crash into every feature. There are some aspects of it that are very appealing (mostly the nonsocial ones...) that I find useful, but due to my initial repulsion to the 'major change' I am less likely to invest in using.
  - npizzolato 12y ago
    The big announcement was fine. The problem is they hardly let anyone in after the big announcement. I remember there being a huge hype for Google+ when it was announced. But almost no one got invites, and those that did couldn't do anything on it so they quickly lost interest. It's hard to get excited about a social network when none of your friends can be a part of it.
    - apendleton 12y ago
      Yeah, in hindsight Facebook looks especially clever in terms of how they managed their initial roll-out. Going university by university meant that they got to gradually ramp things up infrastructure-wise, and created the I-want-it-because-I-can't-have-it effect that I think a lot of companies go for with phased roll-outs, invitations, etc., but because any given school would get it all at once, as soon as your school got it, most of your peer group would also get it at the same time, which avoided the chicken-and-egg problem Google+ experienced.
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    Total agreement as I just posted above. A slow and staged rollout for Facebook worked great. In large part because it started with a small, well-suited, and high-status user base (Harvard, Ivy League), and expanded from there. Into a world already dominated by MySpace and with plenty of other social network contenders. Including Google's own Orkut, Buzz, and Wave.
- bookwormAT 12y ago
  you mean you had hopes that Google would use a unique account for every application again? Or that they use a different commenting solution in every app? Sorry but that will never happen. If you're lucky they remove the '+' at some point.
  - yuhong 12y ago
    Well, I hope at least that the privacy policy finally changes to comply with EU privacy laws.
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lewisflude 12y ago
Why would someone leave a company immediately if it was under good terms? Or is it just the case that this wasn't public until today?
- raverbashing 12y ago
  Because any more time the person remains there is giving information to a potential competitor (and there's no point staying if you don't want to be there anymore) I think Marissa Meyer gave Google a half hour notice.
  - nostrademons 12y ago
    Marissa resigned by e-mail and just didn't come into work that day.
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  - watwut 12y ago
    Especially in the case of high level manager leaving voluntary, I would expect him to leave with proper few weeks notice. Giving company time to shift responsibilities to other people and all that. Spending day or two explaining things to whoever will take his place. Leaving right now should be nuclear option if you have no other choice or was treated very badly.
    - cookiecaper 12y ago
      He probably gave notice and this just was developed privately until his time had come. It's wise to do this kind of thing in the background. Subordinates are more likely to question the decisions of someone that they know won't be around much longer, etc.
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  If his reason for leaving given here is real, then they probably knew for about a month: https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/MFrDF3W4RJL https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/MFrDF3W4...
mauricio-OH 12y ago
Pushed out for sure
hawase 12y ago
How is it an "exclusive"? it's all there in public posts: Vic: https://plus.google.com/+VicGundotra/posts/MFrDF3W4RJL https://plus.google.com/+VicGundotra/posts/MFrDF3W4RJL Larry: https://plus.google.com/+LarryPage/posts/A2gm48nzitx https://plus.google.com/+LarryPage/posts/A2gm48nzitx
- arebop 12y ago
  The "exclusive" article was posted at 10:16. Larry's post, quoted in the article, was posted at 10:18.
- macleanjr 12y ago
  They had the story under embargo... looks like recode posted the same time as Vic did.
whoismua 12y ago
"This is a group of people who built social at Google against the skepticism of so many.” Well, he does have a sense of humor. They sure built it, I see many obscure names ranking on search engines...only to see an G+ empty page (along with a Youtube one--also empty. Looks like the Android signup process.)
gdulli 12y ago
I guess there are challenges more interesting than cat pictures to be solved elsewhere.
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- guyzero 12y ago
  He's been there nearly 7 years.
nfoz 12y ago
Can he take Google+ with him!?
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e15ctr0n 12y ago
The comments on the Secret app[1] speculate that he might be joining Mozilla, Github or the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. What if he rejoins Microsoft instead? [1] https://www.secret.ly/p/wxdnkdhjnsocjxwnizhdpacufc https://www.secret.ly/p/wxdnkdhjnsocjxwnizhdpacufc
- ulfw 12y ago
  Right. Or he could join Baby Gap, Toyota or the banking company Wells Fargo. I mean come on, those are pretty vastly different types of places ;)
- powera 12y ago
  I think that's just people suggesting companies that have had a recent people of hiring people that say stupid things, not serious speculation. [Brendan Eich, Tom Preston-Warner, Tom Perkins] Because vicg@ also says a lot of stupid things (and does a lot of stupid things).
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  - pessimizer 12y ago
    You got downvoted for getting the joke:)
- mahyarm 12y ago
  People on secret are one subpoena away from being revealed.
leccine 12y ago
There plans to rename the service Google- reflecting to the lack of interest of the public using the service even after forcing youtube users to have an account.
bkurtz13 12y ago
Yes, "he" built Google+ from nothing.
- libria 12y ago
  The guy who "built" my house never lifted a hammer. I think our egos can take the abbreviated form of "assembled/managed the team that built G+" in stride. Context, dude.
  - pekk 12y ago
    You paid someone to build you a house. Therefore you built the house! It wouldn't have happened without you to pay, would it? It's not dishonest, it's just shorthand. Context, dude.
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- samstave 12y ago
  From nothing to what exactly?
jgalt212 12y ago
17 comments (as of this writing), and about 1/3rd are grayed-out due to down votes. Ergo, there are some pretty strong opinions about Vic.
- yuhong 12y ago
  I said before this was on my wishlist too.
- huhtenberg 12y ago
  There A LOT of downvoting across all HN threads recently. In every single topic there are comments upon comments that are in gray and barely any actually deserving to be there. These aggressive downvoting sprees also seem to coincide with that change in HN stewardship from few weeks ago.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    There might not actually be an increase - dang said they increased the effect of downvotes recently.
  - dang 12y ago
    Your wording suggests that maybe you didn't see sama's announcement about the change we made to count more downvotes [1] or any of my recent comments about it. People can reasonably differ, of course, but I don't agree that barely any negatively scored comments deserve to be there. I look at all the negatively scored comments, and the vast majority are either not substantive, not civil, or both. It's true, though, that some substantive, civil comments are getting unfairly faded out. We're asking users to give those a corrective upvote when they see them. This is a longstanding HN practice. It usually only takes one or two corrective votes to get a good comment back to par, so every user can make a difference. Overall, this experiment appears to have succeeded in addressing the epidemic of highly toxic comments. That was our main goal, because those had increasingly been poisoning HN. That doesn't mean, though, that every other effect has been good. If rallying the community to do more corrective upvoting doesn't turn out to be enough, we'll eventually take other measures. All: please don't add comments complaining about downvotes, though. It just adds noise. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7605973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7605973
rjf1990 12y ago
I don't understand why people have to try and read so much into someone leaving a company. High-ranking execs and employees change jobs all the time for numerous reasons.
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  >> High-ranking execs and employees change jobs all the time for numerous reasons. They don't, that's why people are reading into it.
- DannyBee 12y ago
  They really don't. What you just wrote is like saying "This is nothing out of the unusual. Cows turn themselves inside out all the time" (http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/149573/inside-out-cows http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/149573/inside-out-cows)
  - rjf1990 12y ago
    They really do. Anybody who's been at a big company sees it all the time. Most don't make news stories because they aren't at a sexy company like Google, leading up a division that's well-known among consumers. You wouldn't hear about something like the head of fraud detection at American Express leaving his job. I've seen it before (not at Amex, but other large companies).
    - pessimizer 12y ago
      That's only because you don't read creditnews.com. When a major exec leaves in my industry, everyone is talking about it on Monday, and lawsuits often ensue if they end up at a competitor.
      - magicalist 12y ago
        non-competes are void in California.
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- yigitdemirag 12y ago
  You can read this on Google+ : https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/MFrDF3W4RJL https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/MFrDF3W4...
yuhong 12y ago
Personally, I don't think Google+ should be abandoned, but I do wish some of the problems, such as the real name policy, can be fixed.
saidajigumi 12y ago
> Former CEO Eric Schmidt admitted in an interview at the D conference in 2011 that he missed the boat on the rise of identity on the Internet. > “I clearly knew that I had to do something, and I failed to do it,” he said. “A CEO should take responsibility. I screwed up.” I think Eric screwed up in a deeper way that this quote admits. Google+ came up at a time of broader dissatisfaction with other social networks, particularly Facebook. From both UI weaknesses and social perception, I initially saw G+ gaining a lot of interest among disparate folks I'd loosely label "influencers". And _all_ of that interest was shot dead due to attempts to own identity by enforcing the use of real names[1]. There are very real reasons why "average" people need alternate identities online. In some cases, it's mandatory professional separation; your work persona shouldn't be conflated with your author persona, shouldn't be conflated with your close-friends persona, etc. Circles were interesting, but solved a different problem. In this regard, I think Schmidt's big failing was analogous to the fable of the golden goose: he killed any chance Google+ had by trying to seize the golden eggs of online identity. This delayed G+'s adoption enough that Facebook in particular was able to react, improving both its then-primary web UI, make some privacy improvements, and significantly shore up its public perception.[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymwars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymwars [2] Not counting the rabid social-network and/or Facebook haters, whom cannot be satisfied.
- yuhong 12y ago
  I still would prefer that it would not be needed, but that is not Google+'s problem to solve.
- yid 12y ago
  > And _all_ of that interest was shot dead due to attempts to own identity by enforcing the use of real names[1]. It was an understandable, safe, and wrong decision at the time. Facebook's commercial power was widely attributed to the fact that for the first time, wide swaths of people were using their real identity online. With the investment that Google put into +, the risk of having another sea of MetalHead444s was high. I'm just unhappy that they didn't take any really bold steps to differentiate themselves from Facebook, and instead went full Microsoft by attempting to replicate the UI.
igorgue 12y ago
Sorry if I'm asking a stupid question, but: How come all these "internal memos" always leak? Is it fine to share an internal email without getting in trouble at a public company?
- RivieraKid 12y ago
  Perhaps 99.9% of them don't leak.
- jonas21 12y ago
  Did anything leak in this case? The quotes in the article are from public Google+ posts by Vic Gundotra and Larry Page: https://plus.google.com/+VicGundotra/posts/MFrDF3W4RJL https://plus.google.com/+VicGundotra/posts/MFrDF3W4RJL https://plus.google.com/+LarryPage/posts/A2gm48nzitx https://plus.google.com/+LarryPage/posts/A2gm48nzitx
- Steko 12y ago
  How do you know they all leak?
- thrillgore 12y ago
  They're written to be leaked. They are very effective press releases without the costs of going through a wire. In some cases, the wording is changed so HR can lock down who sent it out, and then discipline that person.
- praptak 12y ago
  It's impossible to keep a secret among thousands of people. Whoever sends a memo to everyone@bigcorp must assume that it reaches dozens of journalists' buddies, moles of the competition, perhaps even spies of foreign nations and definitely hundreds of folks who will bellow about it in bars in the evening.
- walshemj 12y ago
  Politics you know the 8th layer of the OSI stack :-) Normally some one has a line they want to run and have their friends in the media to spin stuff to its the same in politics.
bane 12y ago
IMHO Google+'s principle problem is that it's multiple efforts all under the same name umbrella. This is confusing to users and seems to have been confusing to Google. It's a longer-than-twitter public broadcast messaging system/social network/photo sharing/single sign-on/half a dozen other things. There's some great ideas in there. Having a subscription style feed of people I want to follow, and their long-form posts (including deep linking) is much more interesting to me that twitter. There's been some absolute gems posted on g+ that simply can't be represented on Twitter. But it falls down because all these important thoughtful posts are buried in my regular social feed. Everybody seems to like the circles ideas for organizing our connections, that's a great idea I'm surprised still hasn't been really replicated by FB. But then I can't assert different public names/faces to different circles. So my work circle sees me the same way my demoscene friends. But I'd rather use a formal identity for my work friends and a goofy presentation of myself in the demoscene (with an old crazy picture of me from a party). But I really can't. Unifying my identities, along with my logins, wasn't a good idea. And thus I don't really use g+ for social network stuff because neither I nor most of my contacts don't really want to pay the switching cost from FB/linkedin/whatever else. So literally the major initial message for what g+ is when it was launched, I almost entirely don't use or get anything out of. I say this as somebody who really doesn't enjoy FB all that much, but recognize its importance in connecting me to people I know and want to keep in touch with. and it goes on and on. Lots of good ideas, mucked up by bad execution and a muddled vision that doesn't map well to most people's needs. It seems like the pieces of the product that are the best bits, are the ones that are not as deeply buried into the morass. Hangouts is pretty good for example and usually works like I want it to (I usually only message people). But now I hear voice, which I use all the time, is about to get bungled up with hangouts. I bet I'll hate whatever the integration looks like. There are tons of people I use voice with that I have absolutely no desire to tie up with my google+ identity. The integration is too tight. Rather than being a bunch of well branded products, all under a unified umbrella, it's like a bunch of products were stuck in a blender, ground up and then half-baked into a some kind of...whatever it is. I think if you can't point at a product and describe in a brief sentence, it's too big of a concept and that will start infiltrating your development of the product. What is google+? Why not "google+ personal news" and "google+ social network" and "google+ chat" and whatever else? Each of those is focused and simple and disjoint enough not to cause confusion.
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- steele 12y ago
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKNX6dieVcc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKNX6dieVcc
DogeDogeDoge 12y ago
g+ was garbage from the start and could not compete with facebook. And anyone who used facebook know how trash it is... In terms of UI. But google made it worse experience. Google will try to recover now :)
inthewoods 12y ago
Vic did a pretty great job getting Google+ in decent shape, but am I the only one that finds the overall strategy among these properties confusing? I know that whenever I talk with a normal, non-tech civilian they are always confused by the service. They have Youtube (where you can upload videos), Google+ Photos (where you can upload videos and stream as well), Google Drive (where you can also upload pictures and videos in addition to creating standalone Google Docs). It would seem to make more sense to me that there should be a Drive where I store Photos, Videos and Documents, or there should be standalone Photos/Videos and then a separate service for Documents. To me, these services should exist separately, but Google+ should bring them all together - meaning I can decide, from my photos/videos/documents what to post to Google+. If I want to post a video to the general public, I should post it to Youtube. Obviously people may have different use cases (consumer vs. business) - but as someone using Google services as both a consumer and business, I find the tools confusing - and it seems to be even more confusing for my Mom.
- aasarava 12y ago
  You're definitely not the only one. Trying to understand the interaction between the various Google properties makes me feel like an idiot -- and yet I'm a Web developer with a CS degree who has been using the Web just about every day since 1994. For example, have you ever tried to schedule a Google Hangout chat? As far as I can tell, there's no way to do it from Google Hangouts. You need to first sign in to Google+, then go to Google Events and create a new event, and then you have to specify that it's a video event. Is it a use case they just don't care about? Is there no one at the company who's looking at this setup and thinking, "wow, this is confusing and we can probably simplify that"? Or is my brain just getting too brittle to make sense of it?
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  - timothya 12y ago
    That's an interesting use case, but the only time you're actually using Google Hangouts is when you're already in a conversation with someone, so I imagine that's not where most people would go when they want to schedule a call with someone. When I think about scheduling, I immediately think about Google Calendar or Google+ Events, because that's where I would go to schedule any sort of event (with a video call or otherwise). Both of those places support adding a Hangouts video chat to an event.
ThePhysicist 12y ago
370 million monthly active users. I wonder how many of those interact with Google+ by mere accident. Personally, the only time I post stuff on G+ is when I'm using another Google service (e.g. Youtube) and they post it to my G+ stream, often without my knowledge or consent.
- blisterpeanuts 12y ago
  Even 100 million would be a healthy number. That's a lot of people to interact with. Maybe even more than enough people. I wonder whether big is so desirable, after all. I notice that the quality of the comments has declined, especially on the news streams such as NBC etc. Whenever they put a news item on the G+ stream, there ensues a whole bunch of inane, pointless comments by people with made-up names, silly avatars, etc. The original G+ population seemed more intelligent.
- pessimizer 12y ago
  "We’ve heard that there were tensions between Gundotra and others inside the company, especially surrounding the 'forced' integrations of Google+ into products like YouTube and Gmail. Apparently, once each of those integrations was made, they were initially being claimed as 'active user' wins until Page stepped in and made a distinction." http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/24/google-is-walking-dead/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/24/google-is-walking-dead/
- exodust 12y ago
  As Vic departs, the elephant in the room remains - that the quoted G+ active population is probably one of the most inflated BS numbers ever. From rating an app to commenting on youtube, to uploading on youtube, the content is posted to your mandatory Google+ account by default. Remember the girl on Youtube who sang a song about how much Google+ sux, then the Youtube co-founder also said it sux? Those reactions should have been of major concern. Not unfixable, but you can't ignore teenage girls singing songs about how much your product sucks!
mark_l_watson 12y ago
I am really curious what he will do next. I am just a light user of G+, FB and Twitter. That said, I enjoy G+ the most.
- discordance 12y ago
  Xiaomi could do with a social network.
niix 12y ago
It appears that many employees did not like working with him. This was posted on Secret "One of the worst execs I've ever worked with. Completely skirted the design process and got designers to do one off projects for him that would derail plans for weeks on end and kill team trust". Interesting, since there is much praise from Page.
- npizzolato 12y ago
  I'd be careful extrapolating an anonymous post from a single person on a public forum to "many".
- nostrademons 12y ago
  He's a polarizing figure. I know people who used to work in Social (and elsewhere in the company) that hated working for them, and now they don't work in Social. I also know people in Social who really admire him as a visionary leader who's not afraid to take a lot of personal flack to get the job done. I think this is common to many people with strong opinions and the confidence to act on them. Marissa was very similar: some people absolutely hated her, while others really respected her.
akennberg 12y ago
Google tried social without a real name policy (aka Buzz) and it didn't work. Google+ has better content.
- zmmmmm 12y ago
  I don't know how you can compare them. G+ has had a massive support from being tied into every other product, in some cases taking features people already use and making G+ mandatory for continuing to use them. Not to mention getting tied to search such that not having a G+ presence could significantly adversely affect your SEO. Buzz certainly had its problems but it doesn't mean G+ was the right way, or that real names had anything to do with the difference.
teawithcarl 12y ago
Gundotra sucked anyway. So does Google+. That's what happens when you "copy" technology, rather than rethinking/innovating. A new player to the space, and they just "copy" - that sucks. (apologize for my negativity.) Try Google searching on Vic Gundotra "licking the cookie". (a metaphor for making a project "his" before others can lay claim.) "Gundotra, we’re told, would “lick the cookie” at Google by putting future products and features into presentations about Google+, long before his teams would be able to get to building them". 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 12y ago
  Yea, I have mentioned this before too and I think this article was submitted to HN.
blisterpeanuts 12y ago
I like G+ for the photo back-up from my Android phone. In fact, that seems to be the killer feature. I wonder what will happen to G+ if Facebook adds a similar feature. The stream is interesting if you add enough people and organizations, but I find I can go for days or weeks without checking it. I know some people spend all day on G+, but it's unclear to me why. Between FB, G+, Twitter, LinkedIn, and a host of other comment boards and social network wannabes, it seems to me this market is absolutely flooded, and sooner or later, social network fatigue has got to set in and cause people to seek something that's more nimble. Maybe there's an opportunity here for some kind of meta-network that ties together several of these sites. I would like that. A single stream, one login, see all your texts, photos, and updates at a glance. Then you can drill deeper into the particular social network if you care to take the time.
- wtbob 12y ago
  > I like G+ for the photo back-up from my Android phone. See, I don't use any of Google's 'let us manage your plaintext data' services except for mail (because email travels in the clear anyway, I'm not too bothered by that). If they would enable me to store my phone, tablet & app settings, Chrome passwords and backed-up data on their servers, encrypted on the client with a key known only to clients I control, then it'd be a killer feature for me. Indeed, if they would bake crypto into their products such that all data were encrypted to the public keys of the intended recipients, then I think that they'd be going a long way towards making the world a better place. But as it is, there's no way that they are laying a finger on my WiFi password, my web site passwords, my photos or any other data I create and do not intend to send to the world.
  - junto 12y ago
    I absolutely agree with you. I even have a Nexus 4 phone, but with all of the core invasive tracking stuff turned off. I want to control my data. Any data that gets stored at rest needs to be stored with PGP at Google's end and only I hold the key. Until they can guarantee that and someone audits that and proved it to be true then I'll consider letting my data move off the device. Because fuck the NSA.
  - 12y ago
k_kelly 12y ago
Google+ has it's users, but to me it always seemed like the ultimate example of building something no one actually wanted.
mathattack 12y ago
“I’m also forever in debt to the Google+ team. This is a group of people who built social at Google against the skepticism of so many.” Seems like the skeptics were right, no? And this is coming from a big fan of Google. Great company, but this didn't work out. Interesting that they give Vic credit for Circles. I thought it was someone else's idea, no? Great idea, they just didn't follow up on it.
frade33 12y ago
Google+ is to Facebook, what Bing is to Google Search. It wasn't really going to work, much like the Bing. There were simply too late to the party as were Microsoft or Yahoo to 'modern' search engine. I only hold Vic responsible for messing too much with the web design of Google+. Jesus, no one changes underwear so often as they would UI. In the end, the failure of missing the social bandwagon solely relies on Eric. Because Vic was working on the mobile side (I think) when Facebook was kicking in.
hartator 12y ago
Last week, I've posted this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7598111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7598111 Last week! :D
kkotak 12y ago
A couple of months back I gave my feedback to Vic about how G+ is in a limbo zone between Facebook and Twitter, and that the needs of none of the use cases are met on G+. In his sincere attempt in trying to do his share of keeping the conversation vibrant on G+, Vic would (bad call, in my opinion) post pictures of his kids for thousands of his followers to see and comment on. I think this is where the non-clarity of the platform emerges. First of all, why would you post personal pictures of your family for thousands of strangers to see and comment on? And what do you do with the responses you get? Are you going to read/respond to all? What's the point of someone saying 'awww' or asking you a personal question, to which a response is not really warranted - as the askers are complete strangers. A lot of people follow others on G+ to get professional insights (as in this case) and Vic's usage of the platform as an example confuses the value proposition. My 2c.
etfb 12y ago
Definition of unintended consequences: I don't instantly recognise the names Eric Schmidt, Larry Page or whoever the other guy is -- I have to look them up, and to be honest I keep mixing up Larry Page and Larry Wall. But I know Vic Gundotra, because he's the wanker who pushed the real names policy and made Google+ the laughing stock among my various communities. "I am a Google employee who likes donuts", indeed!
Tloewald 12y ago
Reminds me of the post on "Mac Pravda" after Steve Jobs shitcanned the Newton division. The Google+ version would go something like this: "Maximum Leader Page declares total victory of Google+. Workers to report to railyard at dawn for reassignment."
dredmorbius 12y ago
Eric Schmidt said in a December 30, 2013 Engaget interview "my biggest mistake at Google was not anticipating social". My response at the time: No, Schmidt, your biggest mistake was failing to realize that vast hoards of highly detailed and categorized personal data are not only an asset, but a tremendous liability. Or as I put it: "Schmidt: My biggest mistake is still not realizing my biggest mistake" http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1u356d/schmidt_my_biggest_mistake_is_still_not_realizing/ http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1u356d/schmidt_...
r0h1n 12y ago
Google+ and Gundotra's lasting, and perhaps perverse, legacy to Google is the "social glue" that forcibly connects together most Google services. That Google+ never quite managed to take on Facebook is obvious. A much bigger and intangible cost, IMHO, is the falling trust in much bigger Google products like search, YouTube etc. as Google+ was shoved down user's throats. To wit, I don't use Google+, but thanks to its bundling I've also stopped logging in to any Google service on my laptop except on a strict need-to basis (for e.g. log in, update Google Drive doc, log out...or turn GPS on, use Google Maps, turn GPS off).
- alextingle 12y ago
  Absolutely. I now block all of Google's cookies, and just don't bother with the few services (e.g. Docs) that I used to have an account for. I'm an AdSense publisher, so occasionally I need to log in to see how much they've been screwing me. I just have an alternative browser for that.
- snsr 12y ago
  > To wit, I don't use Google+, but thanks to its bundling I've also stopped logging in to any Google service on my laptop except on a strict need-to basis This has been the unfortunate consequence for me as well.
- ersii 12y ago
  I find myself in the same situation, the more Google+ leaks out into their other products in an obtrusive way (ie. with "big fanfare") - the less I use those Google services. I have however not seen many people near me, be so annoyed at this as I am. The most complains I hear about is the YouTube pop-up (that never seem to go away); Calling you out on choosing to use your real name instead of your YouTube-nickname.
arkj 12y ago
G+ failed coz of a simple reason, Hubris.
sidcool 12y ago
This post was meant to inform of Vic's departure from Google. It suddenly became a slug fest of Google +.
ForFreedom 12y ago
Is Vic moving to another company?
cessor 12y ago
Oh, good. Vic, please make sure that a) you don't miss the door and b) you take away the comment function of youtube with you.
arunc 12y ago
When I get notification that one of my friends (who is on Facebook full time) has joined new on Google+ after all these years, that shows that Google+ has failed miserably to reach the mass. I don't use Hangouts these days. Its only Facebook messenger (on Android/desktop).
chresko 12y ago
I think had Google taken the approach of 'what do we have that Facebook doesn't?' vs 'what does Facebook have that we can obtain?' would've resulted in a better product (as far as value proposition goes). There was a lot of opportunity to create a unique experience, and that simply didn't happen.
davidgerard 12y ago
"He spent his last hour at the company thanking each Google+ user personally."

402 points by mikegreenspan 12y ago

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kingnight 12y ago
Google+ should have launched secretly and conservatively, instead of big announcement and smash/crash into every feature. There are some aspects of it that are very appealing (mostly the nonsocial ones...) that I find useful, but due to my initial repulsion to the 'major change' I am less likely to invest in using.
- npizzolato 12y ago
  The big announcement was fine. The problem is they hardly let anyone in after the big announcement. I remember there being a huge hype for Google+ when it was announced. But almost no one got invites, and those that did couldn't do anything on it so they quickly lost interest. It's hard to get excited about a social network when none of your friends can be a part of it.
  - apendleton 12y ago
    Yeah, in hindsight Facebook looks especially clever in terms of how they managed their initial roll-out. Going university by university meant that they got to gradually ramp things up infrastructure-wise, and created the I-want-it-because-I-can't-have-it effect that I think a lot of companies go for with phased roll-outs, invitations, etc., but because any given school would get it all at once, as soon as your school got it, most of your peer group would also get it at the same time, which avoided the chicken-and-egg problem Google+ experienced.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  Total agreement as I just posted above. A slow and staged rollout for Facebook worked great. In large part because it started with a small, well-suited, and high-status user base (Harvard, Ivy League), and expanded from there. Into a world already dominated by MySpace and with plenty of other social network contenders. Including Google's own Orkut, Buzz, and Wave.
bookwormAT 12y ago
you mean you had hopes that Google would use a unique account for every application again? Or that they use a different commenting solution in every app? Sorry but that will never happen. If you're lucky they remove the '+' at some point.
- yuhong 12y ago
  Well, I hope at least that the privacy policy finally changes to comply with EU privacy laws.
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lewisflude 12y ago

Why would someone leave a company immediately if it was under good terms? Or is it just the case that this wasn't public until today?

raverbashing 12y ago
Because any more time the person remains there is giving information to a potential competitor (and there's no point staying if you don't want to be there anymore) I think Marissa Meyer gave Google a half hour notice.
- nostrademons 12y ago
  Marissa resigned by e-mail and just didn't come into work that day.
  - deleted 12y ago
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- watwut 12y ago
  Especially in the case of high level manager leaving voluntary, I would expect him to leave with proper few weeks notice. Giving company time to shift responsibilities to other people and all that. Spending day or two explaining things to whoever will take his place. Leaving right now should be nuclear option if you have no other choice or was treated very badly.
  - cookiecaper 12y ago
    He probably gave notice and this just was developed privately until his time had come. It's wise to do this kind of thing in the background. Subordinates are more likely to question the decisions of someone that they know won't be around much longer, etc.
higherpurpose 12y ago
If his reason for leaving given here is real, then they probably knew for about a month: https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/MFrDF3W4RJL https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/MFrDF3W4...

mauricio-OH 12y ago

Pushed out for sure

hawase 12y ago

How is it an "exclusive"? it's all there in public posts: Vic: https://plus.google.com/+VicGundotra/posts/MFrDF3W4RJL https://plus.google.com/+VicGundotra/posts/MFrDF3W4RJL Larry: https://plus.google.com/+LarryPage/posts/A2gm48nzitx https://plus.google.com/+LarryPage/posts/A2gm48nzitx

arebop 12y ago
The "exclusive" article was posted at 10:16. Larry's post, quoted in the article, was posted at 10:18.
macleanjr 12y ago
They had the story under embargo... looks like recode posted the same time as Vic did.

whoismua 12y ago

"This is a group of people who built social at Google against the skepticism of so many.” Well, he does have a sense of humor. They sure built it, I see many obscure names ranking on search engines...only to see an G+ empty page (along with a Youtube one--also empty. Looks like the Android signup process.)

gdulli 12y ago

I guess there are challenges more interesting than cat pictures to be solved elsewhere.

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guyzero 12y ago
He's been there nearly 7 years.

nfoz 12y ago

Can he take Google+ with him!?

deleted 12y ago

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e15ctr0n 12y ago

The comments on the Secret app[1] speculate that he might be joining Mozilla, Github or the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. What if he rejoins Microsoft instead? [1] https://www.secret.ly/p/wxdnkdhjnsocjxwnizhdpacufc https://www.secret.ly/p/wxdnkdhjnsocjxwnizhdpacufc

ulfw 12y ago
Right. Or he could join Baby Gap, Toyota or the banking company Wells Fargo. I mean come on, those are pretty vastly different types of places ;)
powera 12y ago
I think that's just people suggesting companies that have had a recent people of hiring people that say stupid things, not serious speculation. [Brendan Eich, Tom Preston-Warner, Tom Perkins] Because vicg@ also says a lot of stupid things (and does a lot of stupid things).
- deleted 12y ago
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- pessimizer 12y ago
  You got downvoted for getting the joke:)
mahyarm 12y ago
People on secret are one subpoena away from being revealed.

leccine 12y ago

There plans to rename the service Google- reflecting to the lack of interest of the public using the service even after forcing youtube users to have an account.

bkurtz13 12y ago

Yes, "he" built Google+ from nothing.

libria 12y ago
The guy who "built" my house never lifted a hammer. I think our egos can take the abbreviated form of "assembled/managed the team that built G+" in stride. Context, dude.
- pekk 12y ago
  You paid someone to build you a house. Therefore you built the house! It wouldn't have happened without you to pay, would it? It's not dishonest, it's just shorthand. Context, dude.
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samstave 12y ago
From nothing to what exactly?

jgalt212 12y ago

17 comments (as of this writing), and about 1/3rd are grayed-out due to down votes. Ergo, there are some pretty strong opinions about Vic.

yuhong 12y ago
I said before this was on my wishlist too.
huhtenberg 12y ago
There A LOT of downvoting across all HN threads recently. In every single topic there are comments upon comments that are in gray and barely any actually deserving to be there. These aggressive downvoting sprees also seem to coincide with that change in HN stewardship from few weeks ago.
- icebraining 12y ago
  There might not actually be an increase - dang said they increased the effect of downvotes recently.
- dang 12y ago
  Your wording suggests that maybe you didn't see sama's announcement about the change we made to count more downvotes [1] or any of my recent comments about it. People can reasonably differ, of course, but I don't agree that barely any negatively scored comments deserve to be there. I look at all the negatively scored comments, and the vast majority are either not substantive, not civil, or both. It's true, though, that some substantive, civil comments are getting unfairly faded out. We're asking users to give those a corrective upvote when they see them. This is a longstanding HN practice. It usually only takes one or two corrective votes to get a good comment back to par, so every user can make a difference. Overall, this experiment appears to have succeeded in addressing the epidemic of highly toxic comments. That was our main goal, because those had increasingly been poisoning HN. That doesn't mean, though, that every other effect has been good. If rallying the community to do more corrective upvoting doesn't turn out to be enough, we'll eventually take other measures. All: please don't add comments complaining about downvotes, though. It just adds noise. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7605973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7605973

rjf1990 12y ago

I don't understand why people have to try and read so much into someone leaving a company. High-ranking execs and employees change jobs all the time for numerous reasons.

k-mcgrady 12y ago
>> High-ranking execs and employees change jobs all the time for numerous reasons. They don't, that's why people are reading into it.
DannyBee 12y ago
They really don't. What you just wrote is like saying "This is nothing out of the unusual. Cows turn themselves inside out all the time" (http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/149573/inside-out-cows http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/149573/inside-out-cows)
- rjf1990 12y ago
  They really do. Anybody who's been at a big company sees it all the time. Most don't make news stories because they aren't at a sexy company like Google, leading up a division that's well-known among consumers. You wouldn't hear about something like the head of fraud detection at American Express leaving his job. I've seen it before (not at Amex, but other large companies).
  - pessimizer 12y ago
    That's only because you don't read creditnews.com. When a major exec leaves in my industry, everyone is talking about it on Monday, and lawsuits often ensue if they end up at a competitor.
    - magicalist 12y ago
      non-competes are void in California.

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yigitdemirag 12y ago
You can read this on Google+ : https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/MFrDF3W4RJL https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/MFrDF3W4...

yuhong 12y ago

Personally, I don't think Google+ should be abandoned, but I do wish some of the problems, such as the real name policy, can be fixed.

saidajigumi 12y ago

> Former CEO Eric Schmidt admitted in an interview at the D conference in 2011 that he missed the boat on the rise of identity on the Internet. > “I clearly knew that I had to do something, and I failed to do it,” he said. “A CEO should take responsibility. I screwed up.” I think Eric screwed up in a deeper way that this quote admits. Google+ came up at a time of broader dissatisfaction with other social networks, particularly Facebook. From both UI weaknesses and social perception, I initially saw G+ gaining a lot of interest among disparate folks I'd loosely label "influencers". And _all_ of that interest was shot dead due to attempts to own identity by enforcing the use of real names[1]. There are very real reasons why "average" people need alternate identities online. In some cases, it's mandatory professional separation; your work persona shouldn't be conflated with your author persona, shouldn't be conflated with your close-friends persona, etc. Circles were interesting, but solved a different problem. In this regard, I think Schmidt's big failing was analogous to the fable of the golden goose: he killed any chance Google+ had by trying to seize the golden eggs of online identity. This delayed G+'s adoption enough that Facebook in particular was able to react, improving both its then-primary web UI, make some privacy improvements, and significantly shore up its public perception.[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymwars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymwars [2] Not counting the rabid social-network and/or Facebook haters, whom cannot be satisfied.

yuhong 12y ago
I still would prefer that it would not be needed, but that is not Google+'s problem to solve.
yid 12y ago
> And _all_ of that interest was shot dead due to attempts to own identity by enforcing the use of real names[1]. It was an understandable, safe, and wrong decision at the time. Facebook's commercial power was widely attributed to the fact that for the first time, wide swaths of people were using their real identity online. With the investment that Google put into +, the risk of having another sea of MetalHead444s was high. I'm just unhappy that they didn't take any really bold steps to differentiate themselves from Facebook, and instead went full Microsoft by attempting to replicate the UI.

igorgue 12y ago

Sorry if I'm asking a stupid question, but: How come all these "internal memos" always leak? Is it fine to share an internal email without getting in trouble at a public company?

RivieraKid 12y ago
Perhaps 99.9% of them don't leak.
jonas21 12y ago
Did anything leak in this case? The quotes in the article are from public Google+ posts by Vic Gundotra and Larry Page: https://plus.google.com/+VicGundotra/posts/MFrDF3W4RJL https://plus.google.com/+VicGundotra/posts/MFrDF3W4RJL https://plus.google.com/+LarryPage/posts/A2gm48nzitx https://plus.google.com/+LarryPage/posts/A2gm48nzitx
Steko 12y ago
How do you know they all leak?
thrillgore 12y ago
They're written to be leaked. They are very effective press releases without the costs of going through a wire. In some cases, the wording is changed so HR can lock down who sent it out, and then discipline that person.
praptak 12y ago
It's impossible to keep a secret among thousands of people. Whoever sends a memo to everyone@bigcorp must assume that it reaches dozens of journalists' buddies, moles of the competition, perhaps even spies of foreign nations and definitely hundreds of folks who will bellow about it in bars in the evening.
walshemj 12y ago
Politics you know the 8th layer of the OSI stack :-) Normally some one has a line they want to run and have their friends in the media to spin stuff to its the same in politics.

bane 12y ago

IMHO Google+'s principle problem is that it's multiple efforts all under the same name umbrella. This is confusing to users and seems to have been confusing to Google. It's a longer-than-twitter public broadcast messaging system/social network/photo sharing/single sign-on/half a dozen other things. There's some great ideas in there. Having a subscription style feed of people I want to follow, and their long-form posts (including deep linking) is much more interesting to me that twitter. There's been some absolute gems posted on g+ that simply can't be represented on Twitter. But it falls down because all these important thoughtful posts are buried in my regular social feed. Everybody seems to like the circles ideas for organizing our connections, that's a great idea I'm surprised still hasn't been really replicated by FB. But then I can't assert different public names/faces to different circles. So my work circle sees me the same way my demoscene friends. But I'd rather use a formal identity for my work friends and a goofy presentation of myself in the demoscene (with an old crazy picture of me from a party). But I really can't. Unifying my identities, along with my logins, wasn't a good idea. And thus I don't really use g+ for social network stuff because neither I nor most of my contacts don't really want to pay the switching cost from FB/linkedin/whatever else. So literally the major initial message for what g+ is when it was launched, I almost entirely don't use or get anything out of. I say this as somebody who really doesn't enjoy FB all that much, but recognize its importance in connecting me to people I know and want to keep in touch with. and it goes on and on. Lots of good ideas, mucked up by bad execution and a muddled vision that doesn't map well to most people's needs. It seems like the pieces of the product that are the best bits, are the ones that are not as deeply buried into the morass. Hangouts is pretty good for example and usually works like I want it to (I usually only message people). But now I hear voice, which I use all the time, is about to get bungled up with hangouts. I bet I'll hate whatever the integration looks like. There are tons of people I use voice with that I have absolutely no desire to tie up with my google+ identity. The integration is too tight. Rather than being a bunch of well branded products, all under a unified umbrella, it's like a bunch of products were stuck in a blender, ground up and then half-baked into a some kind of...whatever it is. I think if you can't point at a product and describe in a brief sentence, it's too big of a concept and that will start infiltrating your development of the product. What is google+? Why not "google+ personal news" and "google+ social network" and "google+ chat" and whatever else? Each of those is focused and simple and disjoint enough not to cause confusion.

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steele 12y ago
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKNX6dieVcc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKNX6dieVcc

DogeDogeDoge 12y ago

g+ was garbage from the start and could not compete with facebook. And anyone who used facebook know how trash it is... In terms of UI. But google made it worse experience. Google will try to recover now :)

inthewoods 12y ago

Vic did a pretty great job getting Google+ in decent shape, but am I the only one that finds the overall strategy among these properties confusing? I know that whenever I talk with a normal, non-tech civilian they are always confused by the service. They have Youtube (where you can upload videos), Google+ Photos (where you can upload videos and stream as well), Google Drive (where you can also upload pictures and videos in addition to creating standalone Google Docs). It would seem to make more sense to me that there should be a Drive where I store Photos, Videos and Documents, or there should be standalone Photos/Videos and then a separate service for Documents. To me, these services should exist separately, but Google+ should bring them all together - meaning I can decide, from my photos/videos/documents what to post to Google+. If I want to post a video to the general public, I should post it to Youtube. Obviously people may have different use cases (consumer vs. business) - but as someone using Google services as both a consumer and business, I find the tools confusing - and it seems to be even more confusing for my Mom.

aasarava 12y ago
You're definitely not the only one. Trying to understand the interaction between the various Google properties makes me feel like an idiot -- and yet I'm a Web developer with a CS degree who has been using the Web just about every day since 1994. For example, have you ever tried to schedule a Google Hangout chat? As far as I can tell, there's no way to do it from Google Hangouts. You need to first sign in to Google+, then go to Google Events and create a new event, and then you have to specify that it's a video event. Is it a use case they just don't care about? Is there no one at the company who's looking at this setup and thinking, "wow, this is confusing and we can probably simplify that"? Or is my brain just getting too brittle to make sense of it?
- deleted 12y ago
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- timothya 12y ago
  That's an interesting use case, but the only time you're actually using Google Hangouts is when you're already in a conversation with someone, so I imagine that's not where most people would go when they want to schedule a call with someone. When I think about scheduling, I immediately think about Google Calendar or Google+ Events, because that's where I would go to schedule any sort of event (with a video call or otherwise). Both of those places support adding a Hangouts video chat to an event.

ThePhysicist 12y ago

370 million monthly active users. I wonder how many of those interact with Google+ by mere accident. Personally, the only time I post stuff on G+ is when I'm using another Google service (e.g. Youtube) and they post it to my G+ stream, often without my knowledge or consent.

blisterpeanuts 12y ago
Even 100 million would be a healthy number. That's a lot of people to interact with. Maybe even more than enough people. I wonder whether big is so desirable, after all. I notice that the quality of the comments has declined, especially on the news streams such as NBC etc. Whenever they put a news item on the G+ stream, there ensues a whole bunch of inane, pointless comments by people with made-up names, silly avatars, etc. The original G+ population seemed more intelligent.
pessimizer 12y ago
"We’ve heard that there were tensions between Gundotra and others inside the company, especially surrounding the 'forced' integrations of Google+ into products like YouTube and Gmail. Apparently, once each of those integrations was made, they were initially being claimed as 'active user' wins until Page stepped in and made a distinction." http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/24/google-is-walking-dead/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/24/google-is-walking-dead/
exodust 12y ago
As Vic departs, the elephant in the room remains - that the quoted G+ active population is probably one of the most inflated BS numbers ever. From rating an app to commenting on youtube, to uploading on youtube, the content is posted to your mandatory Google+ account by default. Remember the girl on Youtube who sang a song about how much Google+ sux, then the Youtube co-founder also said it sux? Those reactions should have been of major concern. Not unfixable, but you can't ignore teenage girls singing songs about how much your product sucks!

mark_l_watson 12y ago

I am really curious what he will do next. I am just a light user of G+, FB and Twitter. That said, I enjoy G+ the most.

discordance 12y ago
Xiaomi could do with a social network.

niix 12y ago

It appears that many employees did not like working with him. This was posted on Secret "One of the worst execs I've ever worked with. Completely skirted the design process and got designers to do one off projects for him that would derail plans for weeks on end and kill team trust". Interesting, since there is much praise from Page.

npizzolato 12y ago
I'd be careful extrapolating an anonymous post from a single person on a public forum to "many".
nostrademons 12y ago
He's a polarizing figure. I know people who used to work in Social (and elsewhere in the company) that hated working for them, and now they don't work in Social. I also know people in Social who really admire him as a visionary leader who's not afraid to take a lot of personal flack to get the job done. I think this is common to many people with strong opinions and the confidence to act on them. Marissa was very similar: some people absolutely hated her, while others really respected her.

akennberg 12y ago

Google tried social without a real name policy (aka Buzz) and it didn't work. Google+ has better content.

zmmmmm 12y ago
I don't know how you can compare them. G+ has had a massive support from being tied into every other product, in some cases taking features people already use and making G+ mandatory for continuing to use them. Not to mention getting tied to search such that not having a G+ presence could significantly adversely affect your SEO. Buzz certainly had its problems but it doesn't mean G+ was the right way, or that real names had anything to do with the difference.

teawithcarl 12y ago

Gundotra sucked anyway. So does Google+. That's what happens when you "copy" technology, rather than rethinking/innovating. A new player to the space, and they just "copy" - that sucks. (apologize for my negativity.) Try Google searching on Vic Gundotra "licking the cookie". (a metaphor for making a project "his" before others can lay claim.) "Gundotra, we’re told, would “lick the cookie” at Google by putting future products and features into presentations about Google+, long before his teams would be able to get to building them". 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 12y ago
Yea, I have mentioned this before too and I think this article was submitted to HN.

blisterpeanuts 12y ago

I like G+ for the photo back-up from my Android phone. In fact, that seems to be the killer feature. I wonder what will happen to G+ if Facebook adds a similar feature. The stream is interesting if you add enough people and organizations, but I find I can go for days or weeks without checking it. I know some people spend all day on G+, but it's unclear to me why. Between FB, G+, Twitter, LinkedIn, and a host of other comment boards and social network wannabes, it seems to me this market is absolutely flooded, and sooner or later, social network fatigue has got to set in and cause people to seek something that's more nimble. Maybe there's an opportunity here for some kind of meta-network that ties together several of these sites. I would like that. A single stream, one login, see all your texts, photos, and updates at a glance. Then you can drill deeper into the particular social network if you care to take the time.

wtbob 12y ago
> I like G+ for the photo back-up from my Android phone. See, I don't use any of Google's 'let us manage your plaintext data' services except for mail (because email travels in the clear anyway, I'm not too bothered by that). If they would enable me to store my phone, tablet & app settings, Chrome passwords and backed-up data on their servers, encrypted on the client with a key known only to clients I control, then it'd be a killer feature for me. Indeed, if they would bake crypto into their products such that all data were encrypted to the public keys of the intended recipients, then I think that they'd be going a long way towards making the world a better place. But as it is, there's no way that they are laying a finger on my WiFi password, my web site passwords, my photos or any other data I create and do not intend to send to the world.
- junto 12y ago
  I absolutely agree with you. I even have a Nexus 4 phone, but with all of the core invasive tracking stuff turned off. I want to control my data. Any data that gets stored at rest needs to be stored with PGP at Google's end and only I hold the key. Until they can guarantee that and someone audits that and proved it to be true then I'll consider letting my data move off the device. Because fuck the NSA.
- 12y ago

k_kelly 12y ago

Google+ has it's users, but to me it always seemed like the ultimate example of building something no one actually wanted.

mathattack 12y ago

“I’m also forever in debt to the Google+ team. This is a group of people who built social at Google against the skepticism of so many.” Seems like the skeptics were right, no? And this is coming from a big fan of Google. Great company, but this didn't work out. Interesting that they give Vic credit for Circles. I thought it was someone else's idea, no? Great idea, they just didn't follow up on it.

frade33 12y ago

Google+ is to Facebook, what Bing is to Google Search. It wasn't really going to work, much like the Bing. There were simply too late to the party as were Microsoft or Yahoo to 'modern' search engine. I only hold Vic responsible for messing too much with the web design of Google+. Jesus, no one changes underwear so often as they would UI. In the end, the failure of missing the social bandwagon solely relies on Eric. Because Vic was working on the mobile side (I think) when Facebook was kicking in.

hartator 12y ago

Last week, I've posted this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7598111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7598111 Last week! :D

kkotak 12y ago

A couple of months back I gave my feedback to Vic about how G+ is in a limbo zone between Facebook and Twitter, and that the needs of none of the use cases are met on G+. In his sincere attempt in trying to do his share of keeping the conversation vibrant on G+, Vic would (bad call, in my opinion) post pictures of his kids for thousands of his followers to see and comment on. I think this is where the non-clarity of the platform emerges. First of all, why would you post personal pictures of your family for thousands of strangers to see and comment on? And what do you do with the responses you get? Are you going to read/respond to all? What's the point of someone saying 'awww' or asking you a personal question, to which a response is not really warranted - as the askers are complete strangers. A lot of people follow others on G+ to get professional insights (as in this case) and Vic's usage of the platform as an example confuses the value proposition. My 2c.

etfb 12y ago

Definition of unintended consequences: I don't instantly recognise the names Eric Schmidt, Larry Page or whoever the other guy is -- I have to look them up, and to be honest I keep mixing up Larry Page and Larry Wall. But I know Vic Gundotra, because he's the wanker who pushed the real names policy and made Google+ the laughing stock among my various communities. "I am a Google employee who likes donuts", indeed!

Tloewald 12y ago

Reminds me of the post on "Mac Pravda" after Steve Jobs shitcanned the Newton division. The Google+ version would go something like this: "Maximum Leader Page declares total victory of Google+. Workers to report to railyard at dawn for reassignment."

dredmorbius 12y ago

Eric Schmidt said in a December 30, 2013 Engaget interview "my biggest mistake at Google was not anticipating social". My response at the time: No, Schmidt, your biggest mistake was failing to realize that vast hoards of highly detailed and categorized personal data are not only an asset, but a tremendous liability. Or as I put it: "Schmidt: My biggest mistake is still not realizing my biggest mistake" http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1u356d/schmidt_my_biggest_mistake_is_still_not_realizing/ http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1u356d/schmidt_...

r0h1n 12y ago

Google+ and Gundotra's lasting, and perhaps perverse, legacy to Google is the "social glue" that forcibly connects together most Google services. That Google+ never quite managed to take on Facebook is obvious. A much bigger and intangible cost, IMHO, is the falling trust in much bigger Google products like search, YouTube etc. as Google+ was shoved down user's throats. To wit, I don't use Google+, but thanks to its bundling I've also stopped logging in to any Google service on my laptop except on a strict need-to basis (for e.g. log in, update Google Drive doc, log out...or turn GPS on, use Google Maps, turn GPS off).

alextingle 12y ago
Absolutely. I now block all of Google's cookies, and just don't bother with the few services (e.g. Docs) that I used to have an account for. I'm an AdSense publisher, so occasionally I need to log in to see how much they've been screwing me. I just have an alternative browser for that.
snsr 12y ago
> To wit, I don't use Google+, but thanks to its bundling I've also stopped logging in to any Google service on my laptop except on a strict need-to basis This has been the unfortunate consequence for me as well.
ersii 12y ago
I find myself in the same situation, the more Google+ leaks out into their other products in an obtrusive way (ie. with "big fanfare") - the less I use those Google services. I have however not seen many people near me, be so annoyed at this as I am. The most complains I hear about is the YouTube pop-up (that never seem to go away); Calling you out on choosing to use your real name instead of your YouTube-nickname.

arkj 12y ago

G+ failed coz of a simple reason, Hubris.

sidcool 12y ago

This post was meant to inform of Vic's departure from Google. It suddenly became a slug fest of Google +.

ForFreedom 12y ago

Is Vic moving to another company?

cessor 12y ago

Oh, good. Vic, please make sure that a) you don't miss the door and b) you take away the comment function of youtube with you.

arunc 12y ago

When I get notification that one of my friends (who is on Facebook full time) has joined new on Google+ after all these years, that shows that Google+ has failed miserably to reach the mass. I don't use Hangouts these days. Its only Facebook messenger (on Android/desktop).

chresko 12y ago

I think had Google taken the approach of 'what do we have that Facebook doesn't?' vs 'what does Facebook have that we can obtain?' would've resulted in a better product (as far as value proposition goes). There was a lot of opportunity to create a unique experience, and that simply didn't happen.

davidgerard 12y ago

"He spent his last hour at the company thanking each Google+ user personally."