11 ms·

Google+ broke our trust

361 points by andor 12y ago

_random_ 12y ago
"Brin told ... that ... he was “kind of a weirdo” and "It was probably a mistake for me to be working on anything tangentially related to social to begin with." - I respect him more now. Being late to market was probably a bigger mistake though.
- ulfw 12y ago
  You respect him for noticing this only now?
yuhong 12y ago
I like to submit things like this to HN for a reason: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3106555&cid=41288357 http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3106555&cid=41288357 And BTW I am thinking that the EU privacy policy fiasco is probably related. And to think that the EU courts recently ruled that current data protection laws requires that search engines must remove results on request.
sbarre 12y ago
Is it even possible to reverse course on the G+ integrations now? Would Google even want to, even if everyone agreed it was a bad idea in the first place?
- 6cxs2hd6 12y ago
  That's an interesting question. I can imagine this push resulted in some positive refactoring of Google's internal systems, which they would like to retain. However I can also imagine it resulted in some layers of duct tape (very much like the rush job after a merger or acquisition), which they'd love to rip off. It would be interesting to hear a Google insider talk about this. Meanwhile, my guess would be it's a mix of the above, and they'll be stuck with that mix for years to come.
  - toyg 12y ago
    Considering that the real-name policy is just that, a policy (albeit an automatically-enforced one), I don't see what technical problems would arise from its unilateral revocation. Just disable the flagging and be on your merry way. The thing is, I suspect Google leadership still don't really see the policy as a problem. Brin said his involvement was a mistake -- because it tainted his image and his credentials, not because the policy itself was wrong. I suspect he still sees it as dirty work that somebody has to do, just not himself.
- rasz_pl 12y ago
  Do you realize how much more advertisers are willing to pay for targeted campaigns? That real identity G+ policy wasnt to stop trolls or some other bullshit, it was to build better database.
higherpurpose 12y ago
I wish both Google and Microsoft would understand that you can't force change down users' throats. It needs to come naturally. They need to want it, and have it grow organically. Sure, forcing them will definitely bring you bigger "adoption" (for lack of a better word) faster, but it will also build up a lot of resentment, potentially negating any advantage you might have from ramming the change through, in the long run. A lot of people didn't understand Twitter in the first 3+ years, but it still managed to grow organically, because people wanted to join it over the years. Google tried to push Google+ to its 1 billion users within 2 years, with seemingly very little advantage for the users. What did they expect? Same for Microsoft when it comes to pushing Metro to PC users who have been perfectly happy with their PC interface, but Microsoft wanted to force them to use a tablet interface on a PC. Why? Because Microsoft said so, and because they would get to flash "bigger numbers" to developers for "Metro users". The actual experience of the user on a desktop was barely a distant concern. If you're a big corporation, and you can't grow a new business organically, then tough luck. Maybe you shouldn't be in that market then.
- macspoofing 12y ago
  > I wish both Google and Microsoft AND Apple ... Right!?
  - Htsthbjig 12y ago
    Yeah, the new iOS uses the iCloud on American soil for all your pictures and videos by default...
- brudgers 12y ago
  I wish both Google and Microsoft would understand that you can't force change down users' throat Innovation is a funny thing, and interestingly, forcing change on end users is something for which Apple regularly receives praise. Or as Henry Ford pointed out, people wanted faster horses. Few people probably wanted rush hour gridlock either. Denonymization of the internet had already happened long before G÷. Cookies and tracking data were collected for more than a decade before its rollout. G÷ just made it explicit, and Apple was already ahead via iOS and the app store and the SIM cards in all those phones. Microsoft was barely a step behind them, and for me? Well I think the Metro interface has huge advantage over WIMP. It's cloud identity integration that drove me from Windows 8. Installation was the Oh-Shit moment.
diminish 12y ago
As an intensive user, everywhere on Google products, I feel the Microsoftization. This includes documentation with corporate jargon, the bloated and confusing Hangout fiasco, the frustrating way to connect multiple identities together. Did they hire any corporate UX/UI/branding/marketing/documentation guys from Redmond recently, after Larry Page's CEOship?
- ktran03 12y ago
  Same sentiments here. Microsoft was the admirable company of the 90's for me, and more recently it's Apple and Google. I really hope Google doesn't continue on this path, though it seems to be unavoidable in some ways. Don't be evil was a good start, it's too bad the motto is inversely proportional to capitalistic gains.
- cliveowen 12y ago
  It's an inescapable reality: companies grow and grow bloated and complacent. It happened to IBM and Microsoft, it happened to Google and it's happening now for Facebook. Once corporate mentality sets in the company's soul is gone.
  - spodek 12y ago
    I saw Craig Newmark of Craig's List speak once after the late 90s bubble burst. He said people kept asking him why he didn't take up the many opportunities to make money he could have -- just one small ad on each page could have made hundreds of millions of dollars with hardly any change to the user experience. He calmly pointed out how many of them went bankrupt and had to change their ways. He seemed more than content with a site that delivered what its users wanted. I'm sure they've made blunders along the way, but as far as I can tell they've remained true to their original ways. Wikipedia says they have a staff of 28.
  - wpietri 12y ago
    My theory is that it involves excessively mediated reality. When Google was two guys, most of the people they talked to were not Google people. Now, my guess is that 95% of their conversations are with people they pay. Those people are more likely to tell them good things than bad things. And those people also think Google is pretty swell, because these who don't leave Google. And at Larry and Sergey's level, they probably aren't within three layers of external reality. There's a diagnostic term: Acquired Situational Narcissism[1]. Basically, when a celebrity spends all their time around people who act like the celebrity is the most important person in the world, then they too start to believe it. I think there's a corporate version of that. Imagine it: You created Google. You can buy anything. Everybody you spend time around defers to you. Of course you'd think you could do a better job of designing a social network than Facebook; half of humanity thinks that. The problem is that people will now let you do that. Once you've done it, your very mediated reality makes it hard to know you've screwed up. Because everybody you talk to needs you to like them. Most of those people have gotten promoted a number of times, meaning they are very good at being liked by their bosses. And who doesn't like good news, especially about a pet project? I'm not sure it's inescapable, but it certainly is the very common outcome. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism#Acquired_situational_narcissism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism#Acquired_situational...
afarrell 12y ago
For some reason, my email address is now linked to a name that is not mine. I've not yet bothered to figure out how to change it, but I wish for the sake of trans people that this error had been more common.
- taejo 12y ago
  Gmail insists on respelling the name of one of my contacts; it's only one letter different, but it's slightly embarrassing that I seem not to know his name after eight years of working together.
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    Having never experienced anything like this from Gmail, I wonder if you have the misspelling stored in a contact. I even have a sort of contrary anecdote, I added an accent to a contact name a few years ago and it has always just worked.
    - taejo 12y ago
      The misspelling seems to come from a (automatically created somehow?) Google+ profile.
Htsthbjig 12y ago
What made Google special in the past was having principles and walking the talk. Those days when Altavista wanted to force people into watching noisy pop up advertisements with annoying colors before you could search anything, and this small company decided to just display text. The days when everybody was onto portals to make the web enclosed inside gatekeepers hand and Google brought freedom. Those days are over. Just the other day I had them trying to change my name in gmail and complete the information I gave them when gmail was invite only like my birthday or a picture of me. When I refused I had them INSULTING ME!! Something alike "it seems you are so alone". Wow, if you don't use their "social private web", or any other social site you are alone, even if you have a blog with thousands of people visiting, and real friends you can talk, kiss or hug. I am looking for Google alternatives right now.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >What made Google special in the past was having principles and walking the talk. Principles? BS. What made Google special in the past was it started as an underdog (back in the day) and wanted to get people to get to using it (not just for search, but for several products it unveilled, to expand their fall-back options). After it got people by the balls with Search, Gmail and Android, it's "so long, suckers".
- pessimizer 12y ago
  As I say until people get sick of hearing it, google had: 1) principles and respect for its users, 2) great mathematical chops, and 3) clean UI. 1) is gone, and everybody has 2) and 3) now. Other than a moral center Google has never offered me anything that I couldn't get somewhere else. At least then, before alternate providers were driven out of business. Right now, I have DDG as my moral search engine. Hopefully, one day, there will be a place for moral email or social.
- joeevans1000 12y ago
  I downloaded the new Firefox and made DuckDuckGo my default search engine in it, and it's actually working great. I figure I'll keep chrome going as well, but I'm starting the weaning process. The new Firefox is much better than the one out a couple years ago. Actually, it's very good. The google+ nagging freaked me out, as well as the fact that I somehow have thought it's been ok for them to scan.
adwf 12y ago
News flash: Company co-founder and senior executive publicly supports own products!
- adam74 12y ago
  News flash: Sergey now thinks that his working so closely on Google+ was a mistake.
  - adwf 12y ago
    Now that it's publicly dead in the water sure. But saying anything negative about your own products while they're still trying to push it as the next big thing? It'll never happen. Any executive that tried would be fired or sidelined. Public comments like that are purely a matter of marketing and PR, individuals (particularly senior ones) will always back the company message. This is why you never hear anything from Microsoft other than Windows8 is great! Or alternatively, you never hear anything from Apple at all. It's the PR department's job, not the senior execs.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
wfjackson 12y ago
If there's one video that shows off the purposefully confusing Google+ and Youtube integration mess, its this one of a woman literally crying because of it. Warning: Strong language https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccxiwu4MaJs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccxiwu4MaJs
- cbellet 12y ago
  Hey, I can find videos of people angry at about anything that exists. Apple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFOx81Lm34c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFOx81Lm34c Facebook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhPzx2KLoUg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhPzx2KLoUg Nature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJNqn-Y3pdY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJNqn-Y3pdY Ah! Why is it so hard to make everyone happy?
  - rando289 12y ago
    > Hey, I can find videos of people angry at about anything that exists. Actually, you can't, and your post is a bit rediculous. For "features of websites that are widely used", how many of them are part of youtube crying videos? Probably ~0.0001% and it certainly could be useful to call one out.
    - VonGuard 12y ago
      See, this is why Google wanted real names on Youtube. We've all read Youtube comments. They are the single worst comments on the Internet. Typically racist, usually mean, often obscene. Google really, through all this, just wanted to make the comments better on YouTube, I think. They heard everyone bitching and figured this was a way to make things less caustic. It didn't help, though...
      - pessimizer 12y ago
        I found them hilarious and often insightful expressions of honest humanity. Now, they're just shit. It's sad how much we're willing to give up to avoid every 100th comment being an aimless racial slur.
johnchristopher 12y ago
Just to be clear: > OPINION: One month after creator and leader of Google+, Vic Gundotra, quietly quit, Google chief Sergey Brin told a conference audience last week that involvement in Google+ was "a mistake." He made the exact opposite statement in 2011. Whose involvement are we talking about here ? Brin, Gundotra or Google ? > If only someone could have stepped in and course-corrected Google+. > > Oh, right. Someone could have. > > The same someone that just told the world, "heh, oops" and walked away to go retreat back into himself, and play with his cars. Is that someone Brin (who could have and has plenty of money to buy cars) or Gundotra (who could have and left the company a month ago - with enough money to play with cars I suppose) ? (sorry for hand walking me but the style is confusing me)
- maxerickson 12y ago
  I read it as being aimed at Brin. It's sort of lazy and cheap to mostly use his hindsight in an article criticizing him. On the other hand, I guess there was plenty said at the time that called the real name policy a mistake.
- keerthiko 12y ago
  It was ambiguous to me too, stylistically. I don't know if Vic had any sort of popular affinity or affiliation with cars, so I construed it as referring to Brin and Google's pet self-driving vehicle projects (his cars), after having said "Google+ was a mistake" (heh, oops).
- skj 12y ago
  I think the cars refer to self-driving cars, which is a Google X project (Sergey runs Google X).
adam74 12y ago
I miss the days of Google Labs and twenty percent time.
- tomrod 12y ago
  Me too. I remember being excited about seeing what Google's next big thing was. I lost hope when Reader was shut down.
  - LoganCale 12y ago
    The Real Name policy was the beginning of the end for me, Reader being shut down made me lose interest in all new Google products, and Snowden made me stop using some of the ones I already had been.
    - vidarh 12y ago
      The Real Name policy is noteworthy from starting out being fundamentally stupid at the "anyone who has spent a week online should know this" level, but still seemingly just a dumb mistake, to being downright malicious and evil the moment it was clear they had no intention of backtracking even after their attention had been brought to the risks it put some people in.
tomrod 12y ago
I've been using G+ consistently for a week now after signing off from a competing social network. I thoroughly enjoy it so far. Why is G+ dead in the water? EDIT: Fatfingered a random exclamation point
- TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
  Forced lack of anonymity and forced integration.
- lbotos 12y ago
  I think most people feel Google's incessant need to push it on every product leads to overexposure and this hate of G+. To further that, I closed my G+ account a few months ago due to inactivity. You'd better believe that the whole process made it sound like I was going to lose access to my email, my youtube account, etc. It wasn't a positive experience.
  - Rapzid 12y ago
    They dropped the ball on nearly every major integration in some spectacular fashion, essentially. Be it forced integration, loosing anonymity, or botching up the g-talk's chat history. The chat history bit me. They used to have a really nice chat history that integrated into the email seamlessly and had good export options. It even worked through IMAP. Unfortunately that all disappeared when they made g-talk hangouts. Essentially it was a duct-tape job like mentioned above. Apparently their storage back-end is quite different and they didn't put the work in to allow for easy retrieval and review of full chat histories. Unfortunately I needed a mass of chat histories(a year) for Visa purposes and the switch was about two thirds in. Retrieving the newer stuff became a part time job :| Other than that I kinda like G+. I also like real identity movement. Eventually I believe that will be a big differentiator for swaths of the internet. The civil, real name sites. And the seedy, anonymous underbelly.
- saraid216 12y ago
  People say that G+ is dead in the water in order to create a tangential economic justification for their actual complaint. Their actual complaint tends to be valid, whereas their claim about the prospects of G+ is generally bullshit.
pistle 12y ago
That's a lot of counterhate. Not wholly unwarranted, but severely one-sided. Corporate products are not for dissidents or the privacy-focused. Period. The end. You need to find alts designed to be private and/or pay to not be subsidized for the profitizing of YOU - whoever you are or want to be. Google wants to fold you into their walled garden by tilting all their products towards each other. Shocking. I can't think of any other... oh yeah right... EVERY massive tech company does this. Otherwise one of the other massive tech companies will eat their lunch within 10 years. You are the frog. They are the scorpion. Also, part of force g+ is what you are seeing grow widely. Enough people are harmed or disgusted with the level of gaming of anonymity that the trolls have achieved that the real identity movement has grown pretty quickly. I doubt large corporate interests will be able to find it profitable, over any minimally significant span of time, to preserve privacy and be a platform for social change/justice. The unintended consequence is also being a platform for the lulz. Don't be evil meets don't be bankrupt. If your platform is a cesspool, nobody will pay to swim there.
- vidarh 12y ago
  A lot of this hate presumably stems from Google's "Don't be evil". Google has been given a lot of trust. They then demonstrated very clearly that they can't be trusted to care at all, and are prepared to go as far as putting users lives at risk over users names. > Also, part of force g+ is what you are seeing grow widely. Enough people are harmed or disgusted with the level of gaming of anonymity that the trolls have achieved that the real identity movement has grown pretty quickly. So give people options to block people who don't use a real name (but realise that for the vast majority of G+ users you have no idea if they use their real name vs. just use a name that sounds real enough to not get flagged by Google) from being able to comment on your posts. That would address the concern of people who have a problem with anonymous or pseudonymous posts, without forcing such a policy on other subsets of users where it in many cases is a problem. Trans users and political dissidents is just a couple of the worst affected. There are many sub-cultures where handles are more common than real name - there are hundreds of people I would recognize by handle, from e.g. the demo scene, musicians/artists, but where I would not have clue who they are if going by their "real" name. > I doubt large corporate interests will be able to find it profitable, over any minimally significant span of time, to preserve privacy and be a platform for social change/justice. For this reason, I expect we'll soon enough find that companies targeting certain groups of countries, like the EU, will eventually find themselves facing legal restrictions on demanding/publicizing real names on the grounds that it is deeply discriminatory against certain classes of people. I'd expect trans groups to eventually go after that if it starts becoming too difficult to use products and services without a legally recognized name.
raldi 12y ago
> With Google+, it became clear that we were all little more than webs of flesh spun over packages of saleable data. What data is allegedly being sold, and who is Google selling it to?
- adam74 12y ago
  The data is basically what products you like or might like. They sell this to anyone who wants to advertise using Adsense.
  - raldi 12y ago
    So how would you go about purchasing a list of products I like or might like?
    - mhurron 12y ago
      You don't, that would be stupid of Google to sell that as it would be a one time sale. Google holds that data and has advertisers come to them, and pay them to make sure their products are seen by the people interested in related products. And the same thing next week. And the same thing the week after. The more information Google has on you to more accurately correlate your interests, the more valuable the data is and the more Google can charge for the access they provide. Everything Google does to get you to give up more information is Google improving the product they have to sell.
      - raldi 12y ago
        In other words, user data is not for sale.
        adam74 12y ago
        It is for sale. Just not in the way you thought it was.
        12y ago
IgorPartola 12y ago
I don't get it. So Brin announces to the world that Google+ is the new sliced bread in 2011. Then he tells a small group of people that he thinks he personally should not have been involved with G+. Also the leader of the G+ project leaves (one month after the project started? One month after Brin had his candid talk recently?) Where in this is the broken trust? What is the author actually upset about? Seems to me like in 2011 Brin and co. thought Google+ was the future. Now Brin simply is admitting that he personally might not have been the right person to take this on and perhaps it was a bad idea (not clear from the poorly written article). On top of that the author is trying to make a story out of the project leader leaving precisely because there was no story there. I think this piece is terribly written and there is no story behind it. G+ is not my favorite product but I think this is just an outburst of anger that does not deserve our attention.
- jwheeler79 12y ago
  the point of the article is that google has lost trust, and google+ along with strange, self-serving behavior of executives is how. that much is undeniable.
  - IgorPartola 12y ago
    What was the underhanded thing that it did? If you put your real name AND sensitive info into a public system, especially one you do not understand, what do you trust will happen? What does Brin's confession of not being the best person to create a social network have to do with it?
    - untog 12y ago
      If you put your real name AND sensitive info into a public system A _changing_ public system. You put your phone number into your address book. You sign up for a Gmail address. Fast forward one year, these items are suddenly combined without warning.
    - vidarh 12y ago
      From where do you get the idea that the author is complaining about anything being underhanded? Brin's "confession" has something to do with it because he was instrumental to creating it in the first place, and someone with the power to correct many of the problems if he wanted to. Instead he's washed his hands of it, and left a segment of his users in the lurch.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
clsec 12y ago
I jumped on board early when I received an invite. I despised FB and was looking for for something that might actually resemble the tribe.net model of freedom and anonymity. Unfortunately, I was told that I had to use my real name and signed up accordingly. Everything was going along fine for about the first 9 months until I got into a small flame war with a woman in Canada about Scientologists (I used to work for some). That turned out to be the end of G+ for me. It seems that the woman reported me for using a pseudonym, which to me and a few of my friends I obviously wasn't. I was livid! I immediately protested loud and clear in my timeline. One of my "hooped" IRL friends works at Yahoo! and told me that he had good connections at Google and could probably fix it for me. And that if he couldn't do that that he could at least vouch for me. As he was trying to work his magic the pressure from Google was getting stronger. I had a big notice across my profile telling me that if I didn't provide legal proof of who I was that my account would be suspended in a week. I received the same threats in my gmail. So I started trying to work with them on this matter only to find that I was dealing with bots. I was beyond frustrated! A few days later my friend came back to me and told me that there didn't seem to be much that he could do. I sure as hell didn't want to send them my my ID or birth certificate! So I caved in, scanned a court document with my full name on it and a judge's signature, and gmail'd it it. I should mention that by this point Google had decided to lock my profile and place a huge notice across it demanding documents. It took almost a full 2 weeks for them to get back to me and say that my document was legit. Well, duh!! With my new found "legal" status I continued to use G+ for about another year or so. But as time marched on I became more and more disillusioned with Google and their products and interacted less and less with G+. Then June 5th 2013 happened and I was introduced to the world of Edward Snowden. I immediately went and deleted everything from my profile and timeline (no small chore!). I then put a notice on my "about" page stating that due to privacy issues with Google and the NSA that this account is no longer active. I now only use my gmail account, have been a happy DDG and IXquick user since before this all went down, and haven't been back to G+ since.
- pron 12y ago
  I can understand not wanting the NSA to snoop your correspondence. I can't understand letting Google do that for years, analyze it, profile you and sell that information to just about anyone, but then thinking that the NSA is the final straw.
RexRollman 12y ago
Google+ was the beginning of the end where using Google service was concerned for me. These days, I use Google only as a search engine and nothing more.
serf 12y ago
I think many of the policies that have been changed towards the usage of a real name are intrusive to privacy, but I have no pity on people who require privacy and lose it after willingly continuing to use a service that is known to conduct such practices.
- tabio 12y ago
  That's a rather harsh way to limit your pity. I won't go so far as making the standard analogies of victim-blaming.
- saraid216 12y ago
  So, what's your real name?
dm2 12y ago
I'd love to see Google+ turn into a LinkedIn and Facebook killer. I just have no use for Google+ at the moment. I don't really like the tiles display and would prefer a list. The YouTube integration doesn't bother me at all because 1) I don't post YouTube comments, and 2) it's easy enough to just create a separate account for using with services that you don't want associated with your main Google account.
- oneweekwonder 12y ago
  Do you have any details of the rewrite, what does it imply? Backend, frontend, etc? Even if you can just point me to the source it would be appreciated.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- nobbyclark 12y ago
  IMO the silently majority is tired of a panopticon of "look it me now" social services who's main use case is massaging users egos. Google should start over, Android-first (instead of web -first) and make the phone Addressbook / Google Contacts the focal point for everything social. Look at WhatsApp - it does exactly this - your phone number is your ID and your contacts is your social graph; how you interact with them - who you call, message etc and when / where you do it - these are your circles Meanwhile if you look at the direction Apple is going, eg new APIs for iCloud eg fingerprint authentication, new APIs for foto management / sharing etc etc. they look about ready to pounce on the whole of social...
  - dm2 12y ago
    A large amount of employees have been moved from Google+ to Hangouts and Android. I think Hangouts is going to be their new standard, unfortunately the transition will likely be fragmented because it's not forced in Android yet. I've seen a very positive response to Google Hangouts, if they successfully (seamlessly) integrate it into Android then it could be a wildly successfully product. I'm not crazy about the name ("Connect" would be a good alternative IMO) and there should be some more calling/voicemail integration features.
hellbreakslose 12y ago
Oh look its another goth chick blogging about Google and whats bad and whatever... Go back in your cave... noone told you to get involved with Google+ neither Google will go with you cause you based your life around Google+ ... Why people nowadays take everything so granted... Guess what before 90 years people were going to the toilet...hmmm on their GARDENS!
compsci_mofo 12y ago
Google is interesting. Choc full of academically bright people, yet collectively dumb as fuck. Shame there is not a phd for common sense or being down to Earth.
- tabio 12y ago
  Can you name one organization of 50,000 people that is collectively smart?
  - mnemonicsloth 12y ago
    Large markets are very smart. Smart is not necessarily nice. Without nice, incremental returns to smart may be negative. Furthermore, the terminal goal of a market is to give some group exactly what it wants. Such groups are often large, and their wants are defined by how their members act -- usually when others are not looking. A market does not care what anyone says they want. It's a wonder the damn things aren't banned.
    - pessimizer 12y ago
      I liked the original wording better. This is yet another failure of Congress, not google. Sorry for posting libertarian downvote-bait.
    - amirmc 12y ago
      I'm having trouble understanding the first part of your comment. For the latter I don't understand what you mean by 'smart'. Without some forms of regulation, people would blissfully poison themselves with dangerous foods (for example).
bowlofpetunias 12y ago
Google+ is just the most high profile symptom. The problem started when Google started using strategies against the fundamental nature of the internet. We always assumed that Google was "good" because they understood and embraced the open and interconnected nature of the internet. They even stated so explicitly. Google+, but also many other Google strategies follow the same pattern: trying to build walls instead of connecting, making things closed instead of more open.
galfarragem 12y ago
To change status quo you need to provide enough value to motivate that change: Google Search: Search experience was completely disrupted. Since that moment people could focus on what they needed (no disturbing ads) and be more efficient. Gmail: Google innovated and simplified a lot email experience. You can easily measure the importance of Gmail to people by the importance of Gmail to the Google brand. Chrome: As an early adopter, I could feel specially the speed difference. I always knew that would be a matter of time till Chrome control the market. Google+: I never understood what value Google was adding to social networks. Facebook at the time didn't need to be disrupted also. After some time G+ went in the direction of Linkedin but couldn't add enough value to make people to change also. IMHO Google+ weakens Google brand. As simple as that. Should be closed? That is a good question.
- vidarh 12y ago
  Facebook needed to be disrupted, but unfortunately the main way Facebook needed (and needs) to be disrupted is in compartmentalising sharing better, and while Circles accomplishes some of that, Googles real name policy pisses all over it.
  - galfarragem 12y ago
    As a user of Facebook and Linkedin I'm only moderately happy with the experience but I can't see myself changing soon. I would be happy to change to one social network that could "compartmentalize sharing better" (using your words) and be used for both social and work issues. If they could add some twitter functionality would be a plus. Is not efficient using different platforms all the time, would be easier to have one platform with different "modes". There is plenty of space to disrupt the market but the status quo here is very strong. The problem is not if somebody changes or not, the problem is that everybody needs to change in mass or the network will be useless.
- sumedh 12y ago
  Add Google Buzz, Orkut, Google Wave, Google Talk, Hangouts. Its like Google is trying everything and hoping something would stick.
facepalm 12y ago
To be fair the SMS+Hangouts integration seems to be what users want. Everybody and their dog is using Whatsapp by now, which is basically the same thing (I think - haven't used it).
spodek 12y ago
A suggestion for Google to save itself regarding G+: Donate some of its engineers' time to fix and revitalize Diaspora -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_%28social_network%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_%28social_network%29 -- or one of its peers or something along its original vision. It could achieve its goal of disrupting Facebook, give users their privacy back, and by releasing the source code, could role back its role in maintaining the code or policing the community. It could declare victory and move on, leaving its users more satisfied than they are now.
- asdfologist 12y ago
  I agree that would be cool, but I don't think Diaspora offers anything compelling to the general public. What fraction of FB users actually care that much about privacy?
  - venomsnake 12y ago
    By the amount of stuff I cannot see on a public profile pages lately and the amount of hidden friendslists - quite a lot in my somewhat diverse circle of friends.
  - pessimizer 12y ago
    In my experience, amongst non-technical people, around 95%. Amongst techies? A strong 20%.
    - Diamons 12y ago
      If that was accurate 95% of people would have stopped using Facebook when the NSA's wiretapping was uncovered. Last I checked Facebook hasn't missed a beat
      - pessimizer 12y ago
        They need facebook because they like their friends. Its immensely important to me that the government stop tapping my phone, but if you think the fact that I still call my grandmother is a sign of consent, you're a fool.
fzltrp 12y ago
I don't think that G+ was a mistake. The only real issue is the real name policy, though I fail to see how they'd be able to enforce it. People could create alternate email addresses with fake names (and some did), and use it when they want to participate social "i-events" without giving up their id. It's been like that before G+, and it would only take a small move from them to correct it. Of course, the downside of this is that they wouldn't be able to claim a number of real users. But could any social site? Btw, am I the only one to find the article title offensive, and unworthy of a place like zdnet? I wasn't a regular reader of their columns, I don't think that will help.
- Angostura 12y ago
  The real issues were real names, the attempt to force use of a single identity across multiple Web properties and the difficulty of being able to work out what would be be visible to what people under what circumstances. Which is really daft, considering that the whole 'Circles' thing was initially designed to do away with the 'different content for different audiences' issue originally.
- ben0x539 12y ago
  The problem with "people could just create fake identities" is that they'd basically be permanently living with the fear of being caught by google and having their entire identity erased, and all the comments would just be "duh, what did they expect creating an alternate email address with a fake name?" That a bad policy is inconsistently enforced doesn't really make it any less harmful. Selective enforcement is more evil if anything, imo. > Btw, am I the only one to find the article title offensive, and unworthy of a place like zdnet? It's much less offensive than the G+ real name policy, so that's a weird focus. ;)
  - fzltrp 12y ago
    Well sure, as long as the real name policy is actively enforcable by G (which I doubt, but someone else apparently had to go through their enforcment practice), there's a risk. Then maybe it means that G isn't the right medium to express oneself anonymously and have an official virtual life. As I said, the only real problem is that policy. > It's much less offensive than the G+ real name policy, so that's a weird focus. ;) I don't think we have the same definition of offensive (please correct me if my second language english is wrong). That policy was harmful, but I wouldn't qualify it as offensive. I think the article provides good examples where it was harmful. That said, if you don't think it's inappropriate for someone to use anonymity (or is it her real name?) to insult someone else, you won't mind if I finish this comment by the same sentence? I won't, because I know that it's not necessary, and it would undermine the message I'm trying to convey, as it does in her case.
infinity 12y ago
So far it has always been a good policy for me to take these lines literally: >> Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information >> and make it universally accessible ... http://www.google.com/about/company/ http://www.google.com/about/company/
neurobro 12y ago
When someone now says doing something was a mistake, I sure hope the statement is in stark contrast with their sentiments at the time they were doing it. Otherwise, why do it?
hartator 12y ago
http://hartator.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/fire-vic-gundotra/ http://hartator.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/fire-vic-gundotra/
bane 12y ago
> Google+ embodied the Internet's cardinal sin: It broke everything it touched I think this is the most important single line of the piece. G+ was pretty broken from the get go despite some promising ideas. But instead of focusing around what was working, Google simply amplified all the broken garbage -- then spread it around everywhere, making everything toxic, cancerous. It's one of those many weird cases where you sit there, hands on your desk, mouth agape looking at some Google property that was fucked over by the G+ project and just ask yourself "doesn't anybody at Google use this garbage?". Because the issues are so immediate and so obvious, it's impossible that nobody raised some red flags. Which leaves two possibilities: - Google is composed of such inept socially awkward people that no red flags were raised and they all just proceeded on course doo dee doo doo dee (a scenario I find very hard to believe) - Red flags were raised and simply brushed aside. The first scenario is hard to believe because it presumes mass and gross incompetence on behalf of most of the employees at Google. But I know googlers, I've been interviews by Google, I've had various interactions with people from Google, and most of them just seem like normal folks from a variety of backgrounds. As more and more leaks out it sounds like the second scenario is where it's at, and the question is why? Was it just some dumb headed attempt to extract any money possible for the major shareholders by turning the brand into garbage? Or was it just an honest attempt at unifying the properties, just managed at an absolutely amateurish level? It's all so senseless and stupid and now everything is broken. The sad thing is, this is something I see all the time, one hopelessly broken pet project is carried by the good idea fairy to some senior manager, and they being a cascade of failures across the rest of the company on something they probably have convinced themselves is just a big gamble with lots of upside. By the time the damage is done and widely recognized, the exec is out the door on their golden parachute leaving the remaining veterans to pick up the pieces and unfuck things. Except in this case, the ultimate party responsible holds half of the majority voting rights and continues to blissfully push socially inept product ideas. The only remediation is a long unfucking process and some possible minor impact on share price, meaning he can only buy 2 300' yachts instead of 2 350' yachts.
- Silhouette 12y ago
  I think there was a more thought-provoking part than the "broke everything it touched" line: Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt told National Public Radio digital editor Andy Carvin in 2011 that if people don't want to use their real names, then they shouldn't use Google+. He explained that Google should be considered "an identity service" with Google+ as the foundation across all its products. Google, particularly its senior executives, have been utterly unrepentant as they've systematically trashed their once hallowed "do no evil" philosophy. The thing I find disappointing is that more people didn't take Schmidt's advice and stop using Google's services. There are plenty of alternative search engines, e-mail services, video hosting sites, mobile operating systems and browsers. Outside these five, Google have relatively few big success stories anyway. Their track record in recent years has mostly been one failure after another, even sometimes damaging their established brands like YouTube and Google Maps. And yet despite all the complaining, a lot of users seem to stick by them. I can understand that behaviour with Facebook (and Google+ itself) because of the inherent network effect, but the longevity of Google's brand loyalty is remarkable.
andyidsinga 12y ago
> Google+ broke our trust Google Reader did it for me. ..and did it for every product where I'm on paying $. I have hardly used google+ and I haven't missed a thing.
tlogan 12y ago
What is the future of Google+? Is Google trying to pivot it into something different? Or Google+ will be just a platform (for login, profile info, etc).
chaser7016 12y ago
Google Buzz and now Google+. Google stop trying to be Facebook! You need to change course and focus on the consumer(customer service) & their privacy. Otherwise others will and are starting to eat your lunch!
- saraid216 12y ago
  Good job. You are now merely 3 years behind everyone else on your commentary. Your next quest is to formulate a complaint about Google Reader shutting down.
Pxtl 12y ago
My problem with Google+ isn't the unification of Google's social platform. That makes absolute sense. The problem with Google+ is that it's way too opinionated. It's a platform, not a product. A platform has to bend to the needs of its users, and those "users" aren't necessarily the people posting the comments - it's also the people hosting the comments on their YouTube pages and whatnot. I appreciate wanting Plus to be backed by a "real" ID, but pseudonym support that fully anonymizes the user (and controls over whether pseudonymous users are allowed to post to your pages) should have been a day 1 feature, for example.
dang 12y ago
We changed the title from "Thanks for nothing, jerkface" to the first subtitle of the article, which (a) isn't linkbait and (b) is more or less what the article seems to be about.
muzz 12y ago
It sounds like Sergey is saying that his involvement in Google+ was a mistake, not that that the company going down that path was a mistake. I think the author is taking the word "mistake" out of context: "It was probably a mistake for me to be working on anything tangentially related to social to begin with."
cromwellian 12y ago
I think it is pretty refreshing for an executive to be self critical and admit big mistakes. Sergey sounded authentic in that interview. Scott Forestall was axed for Apple Maps, but seriously, you rewrite a Maps service from the ground up from scratch and race to release it in iOS6, of course it's going to be beta quality for a long time, since these things take time to mature. I highly doubt the decision to include it in that state was solely Scotts. I like to see companies admit major strategic mistakes as opposed to pretending everything is awesome for all time. (and no, Tim Cook's letter was a kind of non-apology, only a single sentence really admitted any mistake 'We fell short of our commitment')
- nacs 12y ago
  Agreed on the admitting mistakes part but mentioning Scott Forstall as an example doesn't follow. From what I've read, Scott Forestall was fired less for the issues in the Maps application and more for his refusal to sign any sort of apology afterwards for its shortcomings. I'm sure there were other internal factors for his firing but his refusal to publicly admit a mistake was a significant part.
  - cromwellian 12y ago
    Maybe he felt he didn't need to apologize because he was forced to rush and release in iOS6? What if the following conversation happened internally: Scott: "Maps is not ready" Cook: "Maps must ship as part of iOS6, it's the headline feature. We are committed to this time table." Scott: "But there are lots of issues, lots of bugs." Cook: "Fix as many as possible before release, but we are shipping." Then, after the fiasco, he is asked to apologize, wouldn't you feel that the people who didn't take your advice should be the ones to apologize?
pasbesoin 12y ago
"Opt in". If you like e.g. "single sign-on", it should be your choice to set it up and participate. Not coercion. Not coercion holding your existing investment in various products (of which Google was and is acquiring ever more) hostage. If what you are offering is of benefit to your users (should I use the word "customers"? -- a whole other discussion), you should be able to sell it to them -- on an "opt-in", "I'd like to use this feature" basis. As Google+ rolled out, it became evident that it was anything but this. True names. Then the stories -- accurate or not -- of account deletions. I was damned if I was going to risk my longstanding Gmail account for the sake of trying out Plus. Fortunately, the integration was not so quick and thorough that I was at that time compelled to participate in Plus in order to keep that account. (Sign up for Gmail now, and you get a Plus profile, like it or not.) Plus has some nice technical features, and some of the conversation I intersect (under a separate Google identity that I can afford to lose) during my limited interaction with it, consist of more thoughtful and interesting content. But I'll never trust it -- Plus, that is. Google showed us all, with Plus, the limits of their advocacy for us, the users.
model-m 12y ago
Google+ made it just a little too clear that Google is in the business of remembering everything about those who interact with it. The attitude of "Google knows best what's good for you, and doesn't have to justify itself or even acknowledge your objections" also doesn't mesh with what a social network should be, in the minds of many.
vpeters25 12y ago
I think G+ could've owned the "social internet" without the "real id" rule. They had the chance to drive facebook and twitter out of business... they blew it.
brownbat 12y ago
Using and loving G+ and Hangouts to this day. I like how easy it is to get a group chat or a video chat going in the browser, and I like the increased control over sharing I have, especially relative to FB. (I can even share with people who don't want to log in because they hate the service. My FB friends cannot.) I'm trying to sift through the complaints to see if they're relevant to me, but haven't had much luck so far. 1. Everything Complaints on the order of "it broke everything" just seem hyperbolic and silly. 2. Nymwars I think they should allow pseudonyms, but I don't blame the company for trying build something tied a little tighter to real world identities after fighting a decade long war against fraud and spam behind the scenes. I feel like it's within their prerogative to say they're building an identity service, because pseudonym based logins are already widely available. Faulting them for that choice is a bit like saying you don't like Gmail because you think email is stupid. 3. YouTube Among the other major complaints is that they broke YouTube comments, ie, the worst den of inane and offensive comments on the internet since 4chan. Good for them, the team deserves a medal. Someone made a mashup just to illustrate the depravity of comments on the video site a few years ago: http://comments.thatsaspicymeatball.com/ http://comments.thatsaspicymeatball.com/ 4. Popularity Probably the other tacit criticism is that Google launched a service that didn't immediately trounce all other social media sites, delivering everything for everyone. It's used by a mere 350 million people. It's been criticized for that number being only a third of its registered base, but that seems perfectly on track or better than estimates for other social media sites. Twitter's active userbase is probably roughly 20%, for example: http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-total-registered-users-v-monthly-active-users-2013-11 http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-total-registered-user... It's weird that a site with 350 million active monthly users is considered an embarrassing failure. I'm sure lots of services would be happy to trade userbases with G+. It had a few cool features. It wasn't world changing. I feel like it hit some of the Segwey effect, a victim of its hype more than of its failings. 5. Aesthetics. I feel this is the most inarguable complaint. Some people don't like the style of G+, don't like its approach to usability, or find its sharing system needlessly complex or confusing. By all means, these individuals should not use the service. I don't like the look and feel of Pinterest. I shouldn't use Pinterest. To each her own. I worry some authors subtly shift this argument from "I don't like the feel of it," or even, "My friends don't like it," to "It is a failure of design that no one should use." Seems a bit unfair. I believe there are good usability guidelines, but I don't subscribe to the belief that there is a perfect one size fits all, that all implementations of any service will eventually converge to one platonic form. Competition is good because we all like different things, each find different styles more intuitive. I'd be happy to consider other arguments, but so far allegations of the service's abject horribleness seem somewhat exaggerated.
joeevans1000 12y ago
We are google's product. We are bundled and cleaned and sold to advertisers. The google+ process was just a plan to tell their customers that they had a nice, leaner, more refined product. Previously, their customers were complaining that the product wasn't as verifiable. This is a bit like the organic food certification process.

361 points by andor 12y ago

"Brin told ... that ... he was “kind of a weirdo” and "It was probably a mistake for me to be working on anything tangentially related to social to begin with." - I respect him more now. Being late to market was probably a bigger mistake though.

ulfw 12y ago
You respect him for noticing this only now?

yuhong 12y ago

I like to submit things like this to HN for a reason: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3106555&cid=41288357 http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3106555&cid=41288357 And BTW I am thinking that the EU privacy policy fiasco is probably related. And to think that the EU courts recently ruled that current data protection laws requires that search engines must remove results on request.

sbarre 12y ago

Is it even possible to reverse course on the G+ integrations now? Would Google even want to, even if everyone agreed it was a bad idea in the first place?

6cxs2hd6 12y ago
That's an interesting question. I can imagine this push resulted in some positive refactoring of Google's internal systems, which they would like to retain. However I can also imagine it resulted in some layers of duct tape (very much like the rush job after a merger or acquisition), which they'd love to rip off. It would be interesting to hear a Google insider talk about this. Meanwhile, my guess would be it's a mix of the above, and they'll be stuck with that mix for years to come.
- toyg 12y ago
  Considering that the real-name policy is just that, a policy (albeit an automatically-enforced one), I don't see what technical problems would arise from its unilateral revocation. Just disable the flagging and be on your merry way. The thing is, I suspect Google leadership still don't really see the policy as a problem. Brin said his involvement was a mistake -- because it tainted his image and his credentials, not because the policy itself was wrong. I suspect he still sees it as dirty work that somebody has to do, just not himself.
rasz_pl 12y ago
Do you realize how much more advertisers are willing to pay for targeted campaigns? That real identity G+ policy wasnt to stop trolls or some other bullshit, it was to build better database.

higherpurpose 12y ago

I wish both Google and Microsoft would understand that you can't force change down users' throats. It needs to come naturally. They need to want it, and have it grow organically. Sure, forcing them will definitely bring you bigger "adoption" (for lack of a better word) faster, but it will also build up a lot of resentment, potentially negating any advantage you might have from ramming the change through, in the long run. A lot of people didn't understand Twitter in the first 3+ years, but it still managed to grow organically, because people wanted to join it over the years. Google tried to push Google+ to its 1 billion users within 2 years, with seemingly very little advantage for the users. What did they expect? Same for Microsoft when it comes to pushing Metro to PC users who have been perfectly happy with their PC interface, but Microsoft wanted to force them to use a tablet interface on a PC. Why? Because Microsoft said so, and because they would get to flash "bigger numbers" to developers for "Metro users". The actual experience of the user on a desktop was barely a distant concern. If you're a big corporation, and you can't grow a new business organically, then tough luck. Maybe you shouldn't be in that market then.

macspoofing 12y ago
> I wish both Google and Microsoft AND Apple ... Right!?
- Htsthbjig 12y ago
  Yeah, the new iOS uses the iCloud on American soil for all your pictures and videos by default...
brudgers 12y ago
I wish both Google and Microsoft would understand that you can't force change down users' throat Innovation is a funny thing, and interestingly, forcing change on end users is something for which Apple regularly receives praise. Or as Henry Ford pointed out, people wanted faster horses. Few people probably wanted rush hour gridlock either. Denonymization of the internet had already happened long before G÷. Cookies and tracking data were collected for more than a decade before its rollout. G÷ just made it explicit, and Apple was already ahead via iOS and the app store and the SIM cards in all those phones. Microsoft was barely a step behind them, and for me? Well I think the Metro interface has huge advantage over WIMP. It's cloud identity integration that drove me from Windows 8. Installation was the Oh-Shit moment.

diminish 12y ago

As an intensive user, everywhere on Google products, I feel the Microsoftization. This includes documentation with corporate jargon, the bloated and confusing Hangout fiasco, the frustrating way to connect multiple identities together. Did they hire any corporate UX/UI/branding/marketing/documentation guys from Redmond recently, after Larry Page's CEOship?

ktran03 12y ago
Same sentiments here. Microsoft was the admirable company of the 90's for me, and more recently it's Apple and Google. I really hope Google doesn't continue on this path, though it seems to be unavoidable in some ways. Don't be evil was a good start, it's too bad the motto is inversely proportional to capitalistic gains.
cliveowen 12y ago
It's an inescapable reality: companies grow and grow bloated and complacent. It happened to IBM and Microsoft, it happened to Google and it's happening now for Facebook. Once corporate mentality sets in the company's soul is gone.
- spodek 12y ago
  I saw Craig Newmark of Craig's List speak once after the late 90s bubble burst. He said people kept asking him why he didn't take up the many opportunities to make money he could have -- just one small ad on each page could have made hundreds of millions of dollars with hardly any change to the user experience. He calmly pointed out how many of them went bankrupt and had to change their ways. He seemed more than content with a site that delivered what its users wanted. I'm sure they've made blunders along the way, but as far as I can tell they've remained true to their original ways. Wikipedia says they have a staff of 28.
- wpietri 12y ago
  My theory is that it involves excessively mediated reality. When Google was two guys, most of the people they talked to were not Google people. Now, my guess is that 95% of their conversations are with people they pay. Those people are more likely to tell them good things than bad things. And those people also think Google is pretty swell, because these who don't leave Google. And at Larry and Sergey's level, they probably aren't within three layers of external reality. There's a diagnostic term: Acquired Situational Narcissism[1]. Basically, when a celebrity spends all their time around people who act like the celebrity is the most important person in the world, then they too start to believe it. I think there's a corporate version of that. Imagine it: You created Google. You can buy anything. Everybody you spend time around defers to you. Of course you'd think you could do a better job of designing a social network than Facebook; half of humanity thinks that. The problem is that people will now let you do that. Once you've done it, your very mediated reality makes it hard to know you've screwed up. Because everybody you talk to needs you to like them. Most of those people have gotten promoted a number of times, meaning they are very good at being liked by their bosses. And who doesn't like good news, especially about a pet project? I'm not sure it's inescapable, but it certainly is the very common outcome. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism#Acquired_situational_narcissism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism#Acquired_situational...

afarrell 12y ago

For some reason, my email address is now linked to a name that is not mine. I've not yet bothered to figure out how to change it, but I wish for the sake of trans people that this error had been more common.

taejo 12y ago
Gmail insists on respelling the name of one of my contacts; it's only one letter different, but it's slightly embarrassing that I seem not to know his name after eight years of working together.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  Having never experienced anything like this from Gmail, I wonder if you have the misspelling stored in a contact. I even have a sort of contrary anecdote, I added an accent to a contact name a few years ago and it has always just worked.
  - taejo 12y ago
    The misspelling seems to come from a (automatically created somehow?) Google+ profile.

Htsthbjig 12y ago

What made Google special in the past was having principles and walking the talk. Those days when Altavista wanted to force people into watching noisy pop up advertisements with annoying colors before you could search anything, and this small company decided to just display text. The days when everybody was onto portals to make the web enclosed inside gatekeepers hand and Google brought freedom. Those days are over. Just the other day I had them trying to change my name in gmail and complete the information I gave them when gmail was invite only like my birthday or a picture of me. When I refused I had them INSULTING ME!! Something alike "it seems you are so alone". Wow, if you don't use their "social private web", or any other social site you are alone, even if you have a blog with thousands of people visiting, and real friends you can talk, kiss or hug. I am looking for Google alternatives right now.

coldtea 12y ago
>What made Google special in the past was having principles and walking the talk. Principles? BS. What made Google special in the past was it started as an underdog (back in the day) and wanted to get people to get to using it (not just for search, but for several products it unveilled, to expand their fall-back options). After it got people by the balls with Search, Gmail and Android, it's "so long, suckers".
pessimizer 12y ago
As I say until people get sick of hearing it, google had: 1) principles and respect for its users, 2) great mathematical chops, and 3) clean UI. 1) is gone, and everybody has 2) and 3) now. Other than a moral center Google has never offered me anything that I couldn't get somewhere else. At least then, before alternate providers were driven out of business. Right now, I have DDG as my moral search engine. Hopefully, one day, there will be a place for moral email or social.
joeevans1000 12y ago
I downloaded the new Firefox and made DuckDuckGo my default search engine in it, and it's actually working great. I figure I'll keep chrome going as well, but I'm starting the weaning process. The new Firefox is much better than the one out a couple years ago. Actually, it's very good. The google+ nagging freaked me out, as well as the fact that I somehow have thought it's been ok for them to scan.

adwf 12y ago

News flash: Company co-founder and senior executive publicly supports own products!

adam74 12y ago
News flash: Sergey now thinks that his working so closely on Google+ was a mistake.
- adwf 12y ago
  Now that it's publicly dead in the water sure. But saying anything negative about your own products while they're still trying to push it as the next big thing? It'll never happen. Any executive that tried would be fired or sidelined. Public comments like that are purely a matter of marketing and PR, individuals (particularly senior ones) will always back the company message. This is why you never hear anything from Microsoft other than Windows8 is great! Or alternatively, you never hear anything from Apple at all. It's the PR department's job, not the senior execs.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]

wfjackson 12y ago

If there's one video that shows off the purposefully confusing Google+ and Youtube integration mess, its this one of a woman literally crying because of it. Warning: Strong language https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccxiwu4MaJs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccxiwu4MaJs

cbellet 12y ago
Hey, I can find videos of people angry at about anything that exists. Apple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFOx81Lm34c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFOx81Lm34c Facebook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhPzx2KLoUg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhPzx2KLoUg Nature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJNqn-Y3pdY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJNqn-Y3pdY Ah! Why is it so hard to make everyone happy?
- rando289 12y ago
  > Hey, I can find videos of people angry at about anything that exists. Actually, you can't, and your post is a bit rediculous. For "features of websites that are widely used", how many of them are part of youtube crying videos? Probably ~0.0001% and it certainly could be useful to call one out.
  - VonGuard 12y ago
    See, this is why Google wanted real names on Youtube. We've all read Youtube comments. They are the single worst comments on the Internet. Typically racist, usually mean, often obscene. Google really, through all this, just wanted to make the comments better on YouTube, I think. They heard everyone bitching and figured this was a way to make things less caustic. It didn't help, though...
    - pessimizer 12y ago
      I found them hilarious and often insightful expressions of honest humanity. Now, they're just shit. It's sad how much we're willing to give up to avoid every 100th comment being an aimless racial slur.

johnchristopher 12y ago

Just to be clear: > OPINION: One month after creator and leader of Google+, Vic Gundotra, quietly quit, Google chief Sergey Brin told a conference audience last week that involvement in Google+ was "a mistake." He made the exact opposite statement in 2011. Whose involvement are we talking about here ? Brin, Gundotra or Google ? > If only someone could have stepped in and course-corrected Google+. > > Oh, right. Someone could have. > > The same someone that just told the world, "heh, oops" and walked away to go retreat back into himself, and play with his cars. Is that someone Brin (who could have and has plenty of money to buy cars) or Gundotra (who could have and left the company a month ago - with enough money to play with cars I suppose) ? (sorry for hand walking me but the style is confusing me)

maxerickson 12y ago
I read it as being aimed at Brin. It's sort of lazy and cheap to mostly use his hindsight in an article criticizing him. On the other hand, I guess there was plenty said at the time that called the real name policy a mistake.
keerthiko 12y ago
It was ambiguous to me too, stylistically. I don't know if Vic had any sort of popular affinity or affiliation with cars, so I construed it as referring to Brin and Google's pet self-driving vehicle projects (his cars), after having said "Google+ was a mistake" (heh, oops).
skj 12y ago
I think the cars refer to self-driving cars, which is a Google X project (Sergey runs Google X).

adam74 12y ago

I miss the days of Google Labs and twenty percent time.

tomrod 12y ago
Me too. I remember being excited about seeing what Google's next big thing was. I lost hope when Reader was shut down.
- LoganCale 12y ago
  The Real Name policy was the beginning of the end for me, Reader being shut down made me lose interest in all new Google products, and Snowden made me stop using some of the ones I already had been.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    The Real Name policy is noteworthy from starting out being fundamentally stupid at the "anyone who has spent a week online should know this" level, but still seemingly just a dumb mistake, to being downright malicious and evil the moment it was clear they had no intention of backtracking even after their attention had been brought to the risks it put some people in.

tomrod 12y ago

I've been using G+ consistently for a week now after signing off from a competing social network. I thoroughly enjoy it so far. Why is G+ dead in the water? EDIT: Fatfingered a random exclamation point

TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
Forced lack of anonymity and forced integration.
lbotos 12y ago
I think most people feel Google's incessant need to push it on every product leads to overexposure and this hate of G+. To further that, I closed my G+ account a few months ago due to inactivity. You'd better believe that the whole process made it sound like I was going to lose access to my email, my youtube account, etc. It wasn't a positive experience.
- Rapzid 12y ago
  They dropped the ball on nearly every major integration in some spectacular fashion, essentially. Be it forced integration, loosing anonymity, or botching up the g-talk's chat history. The chat history bit me. They used to have a really nice chat history that integrated into the email seamlessly and had good export options. It even worked through IMAP. Unfortunately that all disappeared when they made g-talk hangouts. Essentially it was a duct-tape job like mentioned above. Apparently their storage back-end is quite different and they didn't put the work in to allow for easy retrieval and review of full chat histories. Unfortunately I needed a mass of chat histories(a year) for Visa purposes and the switch was about two thirds in. Retrieving the newer stuff became a part time job :| Other than that I kinda like G+. I also like real identity movement. Eventually I believe that will be a big differentiator for swaths of the internet. The civil, real name sites. And the seedy, anonymous underbelly.
saraid216 12y ago
People say that G+ is dead in the water in order to create a tangential economic justification for their actual complaint. Their actual complaint tends to be valid, whereas their claim about the prospects of G+ is generally bullshit.

pistle 12y ago

That's a lot of counterhate. Not wholly unwarranted, but severely one-sided. Corporate products are not for dissidents or the privacy-focused. Period. The end. You need to find alts designed to be private and/or pay to not be subsidized for the profitizing of YOU - whoever you are or want to be. Google wants to fold you into their walled garden by tilting all their products towards each other. Shocking. I can't think of any other... oh yeah right... EVERY massive tech company does this. Otherwise one of the other massive tech companies will eat their lunch within 10 years. You are the frog. They are the scorpion. Also, part of force g+ is what you are seeing grow widely. Enough people are harmed or disgusted with the level of gaming of anonymity that the trolls have achieved that the real identity movement has grown pretty quickly. I doubt large corporate interests will be able to find it profitable, over any minimally significant span of time, to preserve privacy and be a platform for social change/justice. The unintended consequence is also being a platform for the lulz. Don't be evil meets don't be bankrupt. If your platform is a cesspool, nobody will pay to swim there.

vidarh 12y ago
A lot of this hate presumably stems from Google's "Don't be evil". Google has been given a lot of trust. They then demonstrated very clearly that they can't be trusted to care at all, and are prepared to go as far as putting users lives at risk over users names. > Also, part of force g+ is what you are seeing grow widely. Enough people are harmed or disgusted with the level of gaming of anonymity that the trolls have achieved that the real identity movement has grown pretty quickly. So give people options to block people who don't use a real name (but realise that for the vast majority of G+ users you have no idea if they use their real name vs. just use a name that sounds real enough to not get flagged by Google) from being able to comment on your posts. That would address the concern of people who have a problem with anonymous or pseudonymous posts, without forcing such a policy on other subsets of users where it in many cases is a problem. Trans users and political dissidents is just a couple of the worst affected. There are many sub-cultures where handles are more common than real name - there are hundreds of people I would recognize by handle, from e.g. the demo scene, musicians/artists, but where I would not have clue who they are if going by their "real" name. > I doubt large corporate interests will be able to find it profitable, over any minimally significant span of time, to preserve privacy and be a platform for social change/justice. For this reason, I expect we'll soon enough find that companies targeting certain groups of countries, like the EU, will eventually find themselves facing legal restrictions on demanding/publicizing real names on the grounds that it is deeply discriminatory against certain classes of people. I'd expect trans groups to eventually go after that if it starts becoming too difficult to use products and services without a legally recognized name.

raldi 12y ago

> With Google+, it became clear that we were all little more than webs of flesh spun over packages of saleable data. What data is allegedly being sold, and who is Google selling it to?

adam74 12y ago
The data is basically what products you like or might like. They sell this to anyone who wants to advertise using Adsense.
- raldi 12y ago
  So how would you go about purchasing a list of products I like or might like?
  - mhurron 12y ago
    You don't, that would be stupid of Google to sell that as it would be a one time sale. Google holds that data and has advertisers come to them, and pay them to make sure their products are seen by the people interested in related products. And the same thing next week. And the same thing the week after. The more information Google has on you to more accurately correlate your interests, the more valuable the data is and the more Google can charge for the access they provide. Everything Google does to get you to give up more information is Google improving the product they have to sell.
    - raldi 12y ago
      In other words, user data is not for sale.
      - adam74 12y ago
        It is for sale. Just not in the way you thought it was.
        12y ago

IgorPartola 12y ago

I don't get it. So Brin announces to the world that Google+ is the new sliced bread in 2011. Then he tells a small group of people that he thinks he personally should not have been involved with G+. Also the leader of the G+ project leaves (one month after the project started? One month after Brin had his candid talk recently?) Where in this is the broken trust? What is the author actually upset about? Seems to me like in 2011 Brin and co. thought Google+ was the future. Now Brin simply is admitting that he personally might not have been the right person to take this on and perhaps it was a bad idea (not clear from the poorly written article). On top of that the author is trying to make a story out of the project leader leaving precisely because there was no story there. I think this piece is terribly written and there is no story behind it. G+ is not my favorite product but I think this is just an outburst of anger that does not deserve our attention.

jwheeler79 12y ago
the point of the article is that google has lost trust, and google+ along with strange, self-serving behavior of executives is how. that much is undeniable.
- IgorPartola 12y ago
  What was the underhanded thing that it did? If you put your real name AND sensitive info into a public system, especially one you do not understand, what do you trust will happen? What does Brin's confession of not being the best person to create a social network have to do with it?
  - untog 12y ago
    If you put your real name AND sensitive info into a public system A _changing_ public system. You put your phone number into your address book. You sign up for a Gmail address. Fast forward one year, these items are suddenly combined without warning.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    From where do you get the idea that the author is complaining about anything being underhanded? Brin's "confession" has something to do with it because he was instrumental to creating it in the first place, and someone with the power to correct many of the problems if he wanted to. Instead he's washed his hands of it, and left a segment of his users in the lurch.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

clsec 12y ago

I jumped on board early when I received an invite. I despised FB and was looking for for something that might actually resemble the tribe.net model of freedom and anonymity. Unfortunately, I was told that I had to use my real name and signed up accordingly. Everything was going along fine for about the first 9 months until I got into a small flame war with a woman in Canada about Scientologists (I used to work for some). That turned out to be the end of G+ for me. It seems that the woman reported me for using a pseudonym, which to me and a few of my friends I obviously wasn't. I was livid! I immediately protested loud and clear in my timeline. One of my "hooped" IRL friends works at Yahoo! and told me that he had good connections at Google and could probably fix it for me. And that if he couldn't do that that he could at least vouch for me. As he was trying to work his magic the pressure from Google was getting stronger. I had a big notice across my profile telling me that if I didn't provide legal proof of who I was that my account would be suspended in a week. I received the same threats in my gmail. So I started trying to work with them on this matter only to find that I was dealing with bots. I was beyond frustrated! A few days later my friend came back to me and told me that there didn't seem to be much that he could do. I sure as hell didn't want to send them my my ID or birth certificate! So I caved in, scanned a court document with my full name on it and a judge's signature, and gmail'd it it. I should mention that by this point Google had decided to lock my profile and place a huge notice across it demanding documents. It took almost a full 2 weeks for them to get back to me and say that my document was legit. Well, duh!! With my new found "legal" status I continued to use G+ for about another year or so. But as time marched on I became more and more disillusioned with Google and their products and interacted less and less with G+. Then June 5th 2013 happened and I was introduced to the world of Edward Snowden. I immediately went and deleted everything from my profile and timeline (no small chore!). I then put a notice on my "about" page stating that due to privacy issues with Google and the NSA that this account is no longer active. I now only use my gmail account, have been a happy DDG and IXquick user since before this all went down, and haven't been back to G+ since.

pron 12y ago
I can understand not wanting the NSA to snoop your correspondence. I can't understand letting Google do that for years, analyze it, profile you and sell that information to just about anyone, but then thinking that the NSA is the final straw.

RexRollman 12y ago

Google+ was the beginning of the end where using Google service was concerned for me. These days, I use Google only as a search engine and nothing more.

serf 12y ago

I think many of the policies that have been changed towards the usage of a real name are intrusive to privacy, but I have no pity on people who require privacy and lose it after willingly continuing to use a service that is known to conduct such practices.

tabio 12y ago
That's a rather harsh way to limit your pity. I won't go so far as making the standard analogies of victim-blaming.
saraid216 12y ago
So, what's your real name?

dm2 12y ago

I'd love to see Google+ turn into a LinkedIn and Facebook killer. I just have no use for Google+ at the moment. I don't really like the tiles display and would prefer a list. The YouTube integration doesn't bother me at all because 1) I don't post YouTube comments, and 2) it's easy enough to just create a separate account for using with services that you don't want associated with your main Google account.

oneweekwonder 12y ago
Do you have any details of the rewrite, what does it imply? Backend, frontend, etc? Even if you can just point me to the source it would be appreciated.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
nobbyclark 12y ago
IMO the silently majority is tired of a panopticon of "look it me now" social services who's main use case is massaging users egos. Google should start over, Android-first (instead of web -first) and make the phone Addressbook / Google Contacts the focal point for everything social. Look at WhatsApp - it does exactly this - your phone number is your ID and your contacts is your social graph; how you interact with them - who you call, message etc and when / where you do it - these are your circles Meanwhile if you look at the direction Apple is going, eg new APIs for iCloud eg fingerprint authentication, new APIs for foto management / sharing etc etc. they look about ready to pounce on the whole of social...
- dm2 12y ago
  A large amount of employees have been moved from Google+ to Hangouts and Android. I think Hangouts is going to be their new standard, unfortunately the transition will likely be fragmented because it's not forced in Android yet. I've seen a very positive response to Google Hangouts, if they successfully (seamlessly) integrate it into Android then it could be a wildly successfully product. I'm not crazy about the name ("Connect" would be a good alternative IMO) and there should be some more calling/voicemail integration features.

hellbreakslose 12y ago

Oh look its another goth chick blogging about Google and whats bad and whatever... Go back in your cave... noone told you to get involved with Google+ neither Google will go with you cause you based your life around Google+ ... Why people nowadays take everything so granted... Guess what before 90 years people were going to the toilet...hmmm on their GARDENS!

compsci_mofo 12y ago

Google is interesting. Choc full of academically bright people, yet collectively dumb as fuck. Shame there is not a phd for common sense or being down to Earth.

tabio 12y ago
Can you name one organization of 50,000 people that is collectively smart?
- mnemonicsloth 12y ago
  Large markets are very smart. Smart is not necessarily nice. Without nice, incremental returns to smart may be negative. Furthermore, the terminal goal of a market is to give some group exactly what it wants. Such groups are often large, and their wants are defined by how their members act -- usually when others are not looking. A market does not care what anyone says they want. It's a wonder the damn things aren't banned.
  - pessimizer 12y ago
    I liked the original wording better. This is yet another failure of Congress, not google. Sorry for posting libertarian downvote-bait.
  - amirmc 12y ago
    I'm having trouble understanding the first part of your comment. For the latter I don't understand what you mean by 'smart'. Without some forms of regulation, people would blissfully poison themselves with dangerous foods (for example).

bowlofpetunias 12y ago

Google+ is just the most high profile symptom. The problem started when Google started using strategies against the fundamental nature of the internet. We always assumed that Google was "good" because they understood and embraced the open and interconnected nature of the internet. They even stated so explicitly. Google+, but also many other Google strategies follow the same pattern: trying to build walls instead of connecting, making things closed instead of more open.

galfarragem 12y ago

To change status quo you need to provide enough value to motivate that change: Google Search: Search experience was completely disrupted. Since that moment people could focus on what they needed (no disturbing ads) and be more efficient. Gmail: Google innovated and simplified a lot email experience. You can easily measure the importance of Gmail to people by the importance of Gmail to the Google brand. Chrome: As an early adopter, I could feel specially the speed difference. I always knew that would be a matter of time till Chrome control the market. Google+: I never understood what value Google was adding to social networks. Facebook at the time didn't need to be disrupted also. After some time G+ went in the direction of Linkedin but couldn't add enough value to make people to change also. IMHO Google+ weakens Google brand. As simple as that. Should be closed? That is a good question.

vidarh 12y ago
Facebook needed to be disrupted, but unfortunately the main way Facebook needed (and needs) to be disrupted is in compartmentalising sharing better, and while Circles accomplishes some of that, Googles real name policy pisses all over it.
- galfarragem 12y ago
  As a user of Facebook and Linkedin I'm only moderately happy with the experience but I can't see myself changing soon. I would be happy to change to one social network that could "compartmentalize sharing better" (using your words) and be used for both social and work issues. If they could add some twitter functionality would be a plus. Is not efficient using different platforms all the time, would be easier to have one platform with different "modes". There is plenty of space to disrupt the market but the status quo here is very strong. The problem is not if somebody changes or not, the problem is that everybody needs to change in mass or the network will be useless.
sumedh 12y ago
Add Google Buzz, Orkut, Google Wave, Google Talk, Hangouts. Its like Google is trying everything and hoping something would stick.

facepalm 12y ago

To be fair the SMS+Hangouts integration seems to be what users want. Everybody and their dog is using Whatsapp by now, which is basically the same thing (I think - haven't used it).

spodek 12y ago

A suggestion for Google to save itself regarding G+: Donate some of its engineers' time to fix and revitalize Diaspora -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_%28social_network%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_%28social_network%29 -- or one of its peers or something along its original vision. It could achieve its goal of disrupting Facebook, give users their privacy back, and by releasing the source code, could role back its role in maintaining the code or policing the community. It could declare victory and move on, leaving its users more satisfied than they are now.

asdfologist 12y ago
I agree that would be cool, but I don't think Diaspora offers anything compelling to the general public. What fraction of FB users actually care that much about privacy?
- venomsnake 12y ago
  By the amount of stuff I cannot see on a public profile pages lately and the amount of hidden friendslists - quite a lot in my somewhat diverse circle of friends.
- pessimizer 12y ago
  In my experience, amongst non-technical people, around 95%. Amongst techies? A strong 20%.
  - Diamons 12y ago
    If that was accurate 95% of people would have stopped using Facebook when the NSA's wiretapping was uncovered. Last I checked Facebook hasn't missed a beat
    - pessimizer 12y ago
      They need facebook because they like their friends. Its immensely important to me that the government stop tapping my phone, but if you think the fact that I still call my grandmother is a sign of consent, you're a fool.

fzltrp 12y ago

I don't think that G+ was a mistake. The only real issue is the real name policy, though I fail to see how they'd be able to enforce it. People could create alternate email addresses with fake names (and some did), and use it when they want to participate social "i-events" without giving up their id. It's been like that before G+, and it would only take a small move from them to correct it. Of course, the downside of this is that they wouldn't be able to claim a number of real users. But could any social site? Btw, am I the only one to find the article title offensive, and unworthy of a place like zdnet? I wasn't a regular reader of their columns, I don't think that will help.

Angostura 12y ago
The real issues were real names, the attempt to force use of a single identity across multiple Web properties and the difficulty of being able to work out what would be be visible to what people under what circumstances. Which is really daft, considering that the whole 'Circles' thing was initially designed to do away with the 'different content for different audiences' issue originally.
ben0x539 12y ago
The problem with "people could just create fake identities" is that they'd basically be permanently living with the fear of being caught by google and having their entire identity erased, and all the comments would just be "duh, what did they expect creating an alternate email address with a fake name?" That a bad policy is inconsistently enforced doesn't really make it any less harmful. Selective enforcement is more evil if anything, imo. > Btw, am I the only one to find the article title offensive, and unworthy of a place like zdnet? It's much less offensive than the G+ real name policy, so that's a weird focus. ;)
- fzltrp 12y ago
  Well sure, as long as the real name policy is actively enforcable by G (which I doubt, but someone else apparently had to go through their enforcment practice), there's a risk. Then maybe it means that G isn't the right medium to express oneself anonymously and have an official virtual life. As I said, the only real problem is that policy. > It's much less offensive than the G+ real name policy, so that's a weird focus. ;) I don't think we have the same definition of offensive (please correct me if my second language english is wrong). That policy was harmful, but I wouldn't qualify it as offensive. I think the article provides good examples where it was harmful. That said, if you don't think it's inappropriate for someone to use anonymity (or is it her real name?) to insult someone else, you won't mind if I finish this comment by the same sentence? I won't, because I know that it's not necessary, and it would undermine the message I'm trying to convey, as it does in her case.

infinity 12y ago

So far it has always been a good policy for me to take these lines literally: >> Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information >> and make it universally accessible ... http://www.google.com/about/company/ http://www.google.com/about/company/

neurobro 12y ago

When someone now says doing something was a mistake, I sure hope the statement is in stark contrast with their sentiments at the time they were doing it. Otherwise, why do it?

hartator 12y ago

http://hartator.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/fire-vic-gundotra/ http://hartator.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/fire-vic-gundotra/

bane 12y ago

> Google+ embodied the Internet's cardinal sin: It broke everything it touched I think this is the most important single line of the piece. G+ was pretty broken from the get go despite some promising ideas. But instead of focusing around what was working, Google simply amplified all the broken garbage -- then spread it around everywhere, making everything toxic, cancerous. It's one of those many weird cases where you sit there, hands on your desk, mouth agape looking at some Google property that was fucked over by the G+ project and just ask yourself "doesn't anybody at Google use this garbage?". Because the issues are so immediate and so obvious, it's impossible that nobody raised some red flags. Which leaves two possibilities: - Google is composed of such inept socially awkward people that no red flags were raised and they all just proceeded on course doo dee doo doo dee (a scenario I find very hard to believe) - Red flags were raised and simply brushed aside. The first scenario is hard to believe because it presumes mass and gross incompetence on behalf of most of the employees at Google. But I know googlers, I've been interviews by Google, I've had various interactions with people from Google, and most of them just seem like normal folks from a variety of backgrounds. As more and more leaks out it sounds like the second scenario is where it's at, and the question is why? Was it just some dumb headed attempt to extract any money possible for the major shareholders by turning the brand into garbage? Or was it just an honest attempt at unifying the properties, just managed at an absolutely amateurish level? It's all so senseless and stupid and now everything is broken. The sad thing is, this is something I see all the time, one hopelessly broken pet project is carried by the good idea fairy to some senior manager, and they being a cascade of failures across the rest of the company on something they probably have convinced themselves is just a big gamble with lots of upside. By the time the damage is done and widely recognized, the exec is out the door on their golden parachute leaving the remaining veterans to pick up the pieces and unfuck things. Except in this case, the ultimate party responsible holds half of the majority voting rights and continues to blissfully push socially inept product ideas. The only remediation is a long unfucking process and some possible minor impact on share price, meaning he can only buy 2 300' yachts instead of 2 350' yachts.

Silhouette 12y ago
I think there was a more thought-provoking part than the "broke everything it touched" line: Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt told National Public Radio digital editor Andy Carvin in 2011 that if people don't want to use their real names, then they shouldn't use Google+. He explained that Google should be considered "an identity service" with Google+ as the foundation across all its products. Google, particularly its senior executives, have been utterly unrepentant as they've systematically trashed their once hallowed "do no evil" philosophy. The thing I find disappointing is that more people didn't take Schmidt's advice and stop using Google's services. There are plenty of alternative search engines, e-mail services, video hosting sites, mobile operating systems and browsers. Outside these five, Google have relatively few big success stories anyway. Their track record in recent years has mostly been one failure after another, even sometimes damaging their established brands like YouTube and Google Maps. And yet despite all the complaining, a lot of users seem to stick by them. I can understand that behaviour with Facebook (and Google+ itself) because of the inherent network effect, but the longevity of Google's brand loyalty is remarkable.

andyidsinga 12y ago

> Google+ broke our trust Google Reader did it for me. ..and did it for every product where I'm on paying $. I have hardly used google+ and I haven't missed a thing.

tlogan 12y ago

What is the future of Google+? Is Google trying to pivot it into something different? Or Google+ will be just a platform (for login, profile info, etc).

chaser7016 12y ago

Google Buzz and now Google+. Google stop trying to be Facebook! You need to change course and focus on the consumer(customer service) & their privacy. Otherwise others will and are starting to eat your lunch!

saraid216 12y ago
Good job. You are now merely 3 years behind everyone else on your commentary. Your next quest is to formulate a complaint about Google Reader shutting down.

Pxtl 12y ago

My problem with Google+ isn't the unification of Google's social platform. That makes absolute sense. The problem with Google+ is that it's way too opinionated. It's a platform, not a product. A platform has to bend to the needs of its users, and those "users" aren't necessarily the people posting the comments - it's also the people hosting the comments on their YouTube pages and whatnot. I appreciate wanting Plus to be backed by a "real" ID, but pseudonym support that fully anonymizes the user (and controls over whether pseudonymous users are allowed to post to your pages) should have been a day 1 feature, for example.

dang 12y ago

We changed the title from "Thanks for nothing, jerkface" to the first subtitle of the article, which (a) isn't linkbait and (b) is more or less what the article seems to be about.

muzz 12y ago

It sounds like Sergey is saying that his involvement in Google+ was a mistake, not that that the company going down that path was a mistake. I think the author is taking the word "mistake" out of context: "It was probably a mistake for me to be working on anything tangentially related to social to begin with."

cromwellian 12y ago

I think it is pretty refreshing for an executive to be self critical and admit big mistakes. Sergey sounded authentic in that interview. Scott Forestall was axed for Apple Maps, but seriously, you rewrite a Maps service from the ground up from scratch and race to release it in iOS6, of course it's going to be beta quality for a long time, since these things take time to mature. I highly doubt the decision to include it in that state was solely Scotts. I like to see companies admit major strategic mistakes as opposed to pretending everything is awesome for all time. (and no, Tim Cook's letter was a kind of non-apology, only a single sentence really admitted any mistake 'We fell short of our commitment')

nacs 12y ago
Agreed on the admitting mistakes part but mentioning Scott Forstall as an example doesn't follow. From what I've read, Scott Forestall was fired less for the issues in the Maps application and more for his refusal to sign any sort of apology afterwards for its shortcomings. I'm sure there were other internal factors for his firing but his refusal to publicly admit a mistake was a significant part.
- cromwellian 12y ago
  Maybe he felt he didn't need to apologize because he was forced to rush and release in iOS6? What if the following conversation happened internally: Scott: "Maps is not ready" Cook: "Maps must ship as part of iOS6, it's the headline feature. We are committed to this time table." Scott: "But there are lots of issues, lots of bugs." Cook: "Fix as many as possible before release, but we are shipping." Then, after the fiasco, he is asked to apologize, wouldn't you feel that the people who didn't take your advice should be the ones to apologize?

pasbesoin 12y ago

"Opt in". If you like e.g. "single sign-on", it should be your choice to set it up and participate. Not coercion. Not coercion holding your existing investment in various products (of which Google was and is acquiring ever more) hostage. If what you are offering is of benefit to your users (should I use the word "customers"? -- a whole other discussion), you should be able to sell it to them -- on an "opt-in", "I'd like to use this feature" basis. As Google+ rolled out, it became evident that it was anything but this. True names. Then the stories -- accurate or not -- of account deletions. I was damned if I was going to risk my longstanding Gmail account for the sake of trying out Plus. Fortunately, the integration was not so quick and thorough that I was at that time compelled to participate in Plus in order to keep that account. (Sign up for Gmail now, and you get a Plus profile, like it or not.) Plus has some nice technical features, and some of the conversation I intersect (under a separate Google identity that I can afford to lose) during my limited interaction with it, consist of more thoughtful and interesting content. But I'll never trust it -- Plus, that is. Google showed us all, with Plus, the limits of their advocacy for us, the users.

model-m 12y ago

Google+ made it just a little too clear that Google is in the business of remembering everything about those who interact with it. The attitude of "Google knows best what's good for you, and doesn't have to justify itself or even acknowledge your objections" also doesn't mesh with what a social network should be, in the minds of many.

vpeters25 12y ago

I think G+ could've owned the "social internet" without the "real id" rule. They had the chance to drive facebook and twitter out of business... they blew it.

brownbat 12y ago

Using and loving G+ and Hangouts to this day. I like how easy it is to get a group chat or a video chat going in the browser, and I like the increased control over sharing I have, especially relative to FB. (I can even share with people who don't want to log in because they hate the service. My FB friends cannot.) I'm trying to sift through the complaints to see if they're relevant to me, but haven't had much luck so far. 1. Everything Complaints on the order of "it broke everything" just seem hyperbolic and silly. 2. Nymwars I think they should allow pseudonyms, but I don't blame the company for trying build something tied a little tighter to real world identities after fighting a decade long war against fraud and spam behind the scenes. I feel like it's within their prerogative to say they're building an identity service, because pseudonym based logins are already widely available. Faulting them for that choice is a bit like saying you don't like Gmail because you think email is stupid. 3. YouTube Among the other major complaints is that they broke YouTube comments, ie, the worst den of inane and offensive comments on the internet since 4chan. Good for them, the team deserves a medal. Someone made a mashup just to illustrate the depravity of comments on the video site a few years ago: http://comments.thatsaspicymeatball.com/ http://comments.thatsaspicymeatball.com/ 4. Popularity Probably the other tacit criticism is that Google launched a service that didn't immediately trounce all other social media sites, delivering everything for everyone. It's used by a mere 350 million people. It's been criticized for that number being only a third of its registered base, but that seems perfectly on track or better than estimates for other social media sites. Twitter's active userbase is probably roughly 20%, for example: http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-total-registered-users-v-monthly-active-users-2013-11 http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-total-registered-user... It's weird that a site with 350 million active monthly users is considered an embarrassing failure. I'm sure lots of services would be happy to trade userbases with G+. It had a few cool features. It wasn't world changing. I feel like it hit some of the Segwey effect, a victim of its hype more than of its failings. 5. Aesthetics. I feel this is the most inarguable complaint. Some people don't like the style of G+, don't like its approach to usability, or find its sharing system needlessly complex or confusing. By all means, these individuals should not use the service. I don't like the look and feel of Pinterest. I shouldn't use Pinterest. To each her own. I worry some authors subtly shift this argument from "I don't like the feel of it," or even, "My friends don't like it," to "It is a failure of design that no one should use." Seems a bit unfair. I believe there are good usability guidelines, but I don't subscribe to the belief that there is a perfect one size fits all, that all implementations of any service will eventually converge to one platonic form. Competition is good because we all like different things, each find different styles more intuitive. I'd be happy to consider other arguments, but so far allegations of the service's abject horribleness seem somewhat exaggerated.

joeevans1000 12y ago

We are google's product. We are bundled and cleaned and sold to advertisers. The google+ process was just a plan to tell their customers that they had a nice, leaner, more refined product. Previously, their customers were complaining that the product wasn't as verifiable. This is a bit like the organic food certification process.