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Google Stops Forcing You to Join Google+ When Opening a New Account

107 points by sebst 12y ago

Animats 12y ago
It's recognition of the fact that "social" isn't a good marketing medium. When G+ launched, Google employees were told that their bonus would depend on what they did in "social" products. For a year, Google obsessed on "social". In the end, it was far less profitable than search. Facebook seems to have hit the limits of user ad tolerance. Myspace ran into that limit, and it killed them. It's not yet clear if it will kill Facebook. It may be time for social network systems that don't have ads. Ones where you pay a few dollars a month on your phone bill. As computing gets cheaper, the cost of such a service drops, while the "free" ad-supported services keep running more ads. "Free" has an attention cost, and it may be possible to undercut "free" on perceived price.
curiousDog 12y ago
Looks like they'll be getting rid of it altogether soon. The YouTube integration was the biggest fail. Why would I ever want to see comments from people who were sharing the video on their wall with their friends?
- frik 12y ago
  True. The G+ wall posting that are also displayed as YouTube comments are annoying. It hampers the reading experience of the comments and replies on YouTube.
- Alupis 12y ago
  Youtube still makes be choose a "profile" to log in as just to watch videos. Somehow I've wound up with 4, my original usename, a channel name, google+ name, and my real name.
- IneffablePigeon 12y ago
  The day I adblocked the youtube comments div was an excellent day.
  - andrey-p 12y ago
    Not a massive fan of the G+ Youtube comment merger but.. that would've been an excellent idea even when anonymous comments were a thing.
onedev 12y ago
Oh my god, thanks the heavens.
- Terretta 12y ago
  The English idiom is "Thank heavens." -- http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/thank+heavens http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/thank+heavens
Havoc 12y ago
About damn time they stop trying to ram that down users throats.
80ProofPudding 12y ago
G+, you coulda been a contender.
- Pxtl 12y ago
  Yes, it could have. If Google hadn't managed to do every possible thing wrong with it. Seriously, the sheer number of bone-headed catastrophic screw ups involved in G+ is impressive. The idea that Google could build a unified social network across all their platforms was good. The idea that Google could also make a Facebook-clone was good. Every other idea they put into G+ after that was awful.
  - d0m 12y ago
    I think the design of G+ is gorgeous. I keep referring to it again and again. And as you say, the vision was great, but the execution of forcing everyone on it was odd.
    - davidgerard 12y ago
      Yeah, the design was the thing they nicked from Diaspora.
aikah 12y ago
G+ is a failure,let's be clear about that. You cant force people into a social network.Sure You can merge different services under a single "login" system,but dont make it a social network where things are published on a public profile,that's insane. People dont need 10 social networks...doesnt mean there is no room for competition,just that G+ didnt innovate,or try to have a fresh take on social networks.
- Alupis 12y ago
  Well, just in g+'s defense, FB can be public too, and G+ posts have the option of being set to private, or friends only.
- vertex-four 12y ago
  > Sure You can merge different services under a single "login" system The thing is, Google already had that. I have a pre-Google+ account that I've never upgraded, and I've always been able to log into everything (aside from Google+ itself) just fine.
- sheng 12y ago
  IIRC what was innovative about G+ was the circle thingy. Can't elaborate though because I never used any of the social networks intensively yet.
- keerthiko 12y ago
  While I fully agree with your first statement, I don't think the rest follow. Sergei and Larry (possibly mistakenly) felt like they wanted to rebrand Google as a "social network that manages all information you could ever want," as opposed to a "web search engine that also provides email, messaging, picture sharing, and a bunch of other random stuff." If you look at it that way, rather than forcing everyone into a social network, they were trying to pull everything else they offered underneath their G+ umbrella -- Imagine if FB started out as say, just messaging. Then offered "friending," basically to the extent of LinkedIn - see job info, school, etc. Then offered photo albums. And then one day said "oh all this goes into your facebook profile, we're a social network now." The end product would be the same as what we have today. Would we would probably all be shoveling the shit onto them too? Probably. But that doesn't inherently make "facebook" a terrible product, or the idea of tying all those services into a single social network "insane," I don't think. I think from a meeting-room/white-boarding level, what google was trying makes a LOT of sense. It makes Google's offerings more cohesive. That it doesn't happen to be the way YOU as a customer sees or wants to see Google was not considered (and that's their failure). They seemed to just be running on the vision of what the end product would look like, which would be a competitor for Facebook, but with VERY different, several unrivaled sub-offerings. Turns out they forgot that how they get there matters a lot too. I also think they were on the pathway to innovating further, starting with Hangouts...no other social network where nearly all your friends were gave you multi-way voice+video chat, sharing the same YT video, etc. I think they could have done more, but G+ just sucked so much that it could probably never get any of its labs features off the ground. I hate G+ as much as the next guy, and especially hate how Google tried to shoehorn such a bad product into every google user's lives. But that doesn't mean their vision was nonsensical. It was probably a bit of tunnel-vision though, and it unfortunately did not take their existing userbase's sensitivities into account. Oh well.
itg 12y ago
Now if they will allow us to unlink our YouTube accounts. I put the YouTube app on my phone, and since I already am signed in with the Gmail app, it links my account. No choice is given and there is no way, that I know of, to undo this.
- icelancer 12y ago
  Yup. Incredibly frustrating since I have a business YouTube account and a personal Gmail account.
  - k-mcgrady 12y ago
    >> "I have a business YouTube account and a personal Gmail account." This was Google's biggest mistake. They either didn't realise or didn't care that a huge number of users have multiple Google accounts and very good reasons for it. G+ works well if you have one account for everything. If you have 2 or more than that you're screwed.
- reitanqild 12y ago
  I swap between a couple of different youtube "accounts" on my phone. Is that what you want?
lingben 12y ago
for all its vaunted collective IQ google has an astonishing propensity to make extremely poor decisions (I'm referring to the original strategy of G+ not the corrective and more decision like this one) I suppose there is no remedy for the ills that can befall any large organization or for the fallacies which drive such poor decision making there is a cold solace in that for the rest of us
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
kurtle 12y ago
I think this is a really good answer to the question of "What do you do when [Google | Facebook | Microsoft] enter this space?" Just because they're big and have scale of users doesn't mean that a) they can create a product that people want to use, b) failing that are able to force them to use this product. Though it was a defeat against Facebook, this is a good sign for smaller companies: the behemoths aren't invincible.
- hkmurakami 12y ago
  >Though it was a defeat against Facebook, this is a good sign for smaller companies: the behemoths aren't invincible. I'm not sure if that follows, considering G+ itself was going up against a behemoth in FB, not a small company by any means even a few years back.
Pxtl 12y ago
... why? Why do I care if I have a G+ account? That's the mistake. Give everybody a free G+ and then never ever bother anybody about it if they don't use it. The mistake was making G+ obtrusive. Well, and conflating the concept of "comment" and "share" in Gootube. And making the "real names only" thing universal instead of a rule that users can enforce on people they interact with ("I don't want pseudonymous commenters"). And forcing me to pick a profile every time I go to YouTube (leave that until I start commenting/posting stuff, thanks).
- robotcookies 12y ago
  Yeah,they totally went overboard. The last time I tried to check my G+, they had a dialog asking me for more personal information and wouldn't let me get past it. I closed the window and have not gone back to it since. I was once a supporter of G+ (since I really think facebook needs competition) but I'll likely never try it again.
- michaelmior 12y ago
  The problem is that creating the account makes at least some small bit of my personal info public which I might really not want to happen.
  - Mandelbug 12y ago
    Sounds like an easy default is to keep the profile private until the user chooses to "create" the profile.
    - Pxtl 12y ago
      Exactly. No public posts? No public profile. Mention to the user that they're doing something "profile-oriented" that's going to start appearing on their profile if you really want to do the silly "activity-log" approach to a home-page (that is, every YouTube video or Blogger post the user likes and comments appears on their page) - once the user starts doing actions in public, that's the time to lazily create the public page, and that's the time to ask the user the hard question of "hey, I'm going to start collecting all your public commentary and public likes into a single place so everybody can see the stuff you say and like, is this good? yes? Awesome. No? Let me set up a pseudonym for you to do that" Google obviously wanted people who were active public commenters/contributors on their properties (YouTube, Picasa, and Blogger) to automagically be part of Plus, and that's not a terrible idea (obviously treating commenting and sharing as the exact same operation without distinguishing it to the reader is a terrible idea, but that's just a detail). But why foist Plus on all the lurkers? Lurkers don't add value to Plus anyways.
zacharycohn 12y ago
Now if only they'd offer the ability to merge G+ accounts. Somehow, I have two. Which means I have two youtube accounts, which is a constant fiasco.
bborud 12y ago
So they are giving up now? This makes me so angry. The main reason I gave up on Google+ is because they are clearly not going to address the things that people see as problems. Like the useless notification scheme. I mean HOW HARD CAN IT BE TO PUT THAT ON AN OKR AND GET IT DONE!? Get someone to own G+ who gives a fuck and give it another try.
RegW 12y ago
Is there (somewhere out there) a protocol for a distributed social network where participants have control?
- robin_reala 12y ago
  Sounds like Diaspora: https://joindiaspora.com/ https://joindiaspora.com/

107 points by sebst 12y ago

It's recognition of the fact that "social" isn't a good marketing medium. When G+ launched, Google employees were told that their bonus would depend on what they did in "social" products. For a year, Google obsessed on "social". In the end, it was far less profitable than search. Facebook seems to have hit the limits of user ad tolerance. Myspace ran into that limit, and it killed them. It's not yet clear if it will kill Facebook. It may be time for social network systems that don't have ads. Ones where you pay a few dollars a month on your phone bill. As computing gets cheaper, the cost of such a service drops, while the "free" ad-supported services keep running more ads. "Free" has an attention cost, and it may be possible to undercut "free" on perceived price.

curiousDog 12y ago

Looks like they'll be getting rid of it altogether soon. The YouTube integration was the biggest fail. Why would I ever want to see comments from people who were sharing the video on their wall with their friends?

frik 12y ago
True. The G+ wall posting that are also displayed as YouTube comments are annoying. It hampers the reading experience of the comments and replies on YouTube.
Alupis 12y ago
Youtube still makes be choose a "profile" to log in as just to watch videos. Somehow I've wound up with 4, my original usename, a channel name, google+ name, and my real name.
IneffablePigeon 12y ago
The day I adblocked the youtube comments div was an excellent day.
- andrey-p 12y ago
  Not a massive fan of the G+ Youtube comment merger but.. that would've been an excellent idea even when anonymous comments were a thing.

onedev 12y ago

Oh my god, thanks the heavens.

Terretta 12y ago
The English idiom is "Thank heavens." -- http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/thank+heavens http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/thank+heavens

Havoc 12y ago

About damn time they stop trying to ram that down users throats.

80ProofPudding 12y ago

G+, you coulda been a contender.

Pxtl 12y ago
Yes, it could have. If Google hadn't managed to do every possible thing wrong with it. Seriously, the sheer number of bone-headed catastrophic screw ups involved in G+ is impressive. The idea that Google could build a unified social network across all their platforms was good. The idea that Google could also make a Facebook-clone was good. Every other idea they put into G+ after that was awful.
- d0m 12y ago
  I think the design of G+ is gorgeous. I keep referring to it again and again. And as you say, the vision was great, but the execution of forcing everyone on it was odd.
  - davidgerard 12y ago
    Yeah, the design was the thing they nicked from Diaspora.

aikah 12y ago

G+ is a failure,let's be clear about that. You cant force people into a social network.Sure You can merge different services under a single "login" system,but dont make it a social network where things are published on a public profile,that's insane. People dont need 10 social networks...doesnt mean there is no room for competition,just that G+ didnt innovate,or try to have a fresh take on social networks.

Alupis 12y ago
Well, just in g+'s defense, FB can be public too, and G+ posts have the option of being set to private, or friends only.
vertex-four 12y ago
> Sure You can merge different services under a single "login" system The thing is, Google already had that. I have a pre-Google+ account that I've never upgraded, and I've always been able to log into everything (aside from Google+ itself) just fine.
sheng 12y ago
IIRC what was innovative about G+ was the circle thingy. Can't elaborate though because I never used any of the social networks intensively yet.
keerthiko 12y ago
While I fully agree with your first statement, I don't think the rest follow. Sergei and Larry (possibly mistakenly) felt like they wanted to rebrand Google as a "social network that manages all information you could ever want," as opposed to a "web search engine that also provides email, messaging, picture sharing, and a bunch of other random stuff." If you look at it that way, rather than forcing everyone into a social network, they were trying to pull everything else they offered underneath their G+ umbrella -- Imagine if FB started out as say, just messaging. Then offered "friending," basically to the extent of LinkedIn - see job info, school, etc. Then offered photo albums. And then one day said "oh all this goes into your facebook profile, we're a social network now." The end product would be the same as what we have today. Would we would probably all be shoveling the shit onto them too? Probably. But that doesn't inherently make "facebook" a terrible product, or the idea of tying all those services into a single social network "insane," I don't think. I think from a meeting-room/white-boarding level, what google was trying makes a LOT of sense. It makes Google's offerings more cohesive. That it doesn't happen to be the way YOU as a customer sees or wants to see Google was not considered (and that's their failure). They seemed to just be running on the vision of what the end product would look like, which would be a competitor for Facebook, but with VERY different, several unrivaled sub-offerings. Turns out they forgot that how they get there matters a lot too. I also think they were on the pathway to innovating further, starting with Hangouts...no other social network where nearly all your friends were gave you multi-way voice+video chat, sharing the same YT video, etc. I think they could have done more, but G+ just sucked so much that it could probably never get any of its labs features off the ground. I hate G+ as much as the next guy, and especially hate how Google tried to shoehorn such a bad product into every google user's lives. But that doesn't mean their vision was nonsensical. It was probably a bit of tunnel-vision though, and it unfortunately did not take their existing userbase's sensitivities into account. Oh well.

itg 12y ago

Now if they will allow us to unlink our YouTube accounts. I put the YouTube app on my phone, and since I already am signed in with the Gmail app, it links my account. No choice is given and there is no way, that I know of, to undo this.

icelancer 12y ago
Yup. Incredibly frustrating since I have a business YouTube account and a personal Gmail account.
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  >> "I have a business YouTube account and a personal Gmail account." This was Google's biggest mistake. They either didn't realise or didn't care that a huge number of users have multiple Google accounts and very good reasons for it. G+ works well if you have one account for everything. If you have 2 or more than that you're screwed.
reitanqild 12y ago
I swap between a couple of different youtube "accounts" on my phone. Is that what you want?

lingben 12y ago

for all its vaunted collective IQ google has an astonishing propensity to make extremely poor decisions (I'm referring to the original strategy of G+ not the corrective and more decision like this one) I suppose there is no remedy for the ills that can befall any large organization or for the fallacies which drive such poor decision making there is a cold solace in that for the rest of us

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

kurtle 12y ago

I think this is a really good answer to the question of "What do you do when [Google | Facebook | Microsoft] enter this space?" Just because they're big and have scale of users doesn't mean that a) they can create a product that people want to use, b) failing that are able to force them to use this product. Though it was a defeat against Facebook, this is a good sign for smaller companies: the behemoths aren't invincible.

hkmurakami 12y ago
>Though it was a defeat against Facebook, this is a good sign for smaller companies: the behemoths aren't invincible. I'm not sure if that follows, considering G+ itself was going up against a behemoth in FB, not a small company by any means even a few years back.

Pxtl 12y ago

... why? Why do I care if I have a G+ account? That's the mistake. Give everybody a free G+ and then never ever bother anybody about it if they don't use it. The mistake was making G+ obtrusive. Well, and conflating the concept of "comment" and "share" in Gootube. And making the "real names only" thing universal instead of a rule that users can enforce on people they interact with ("I don't want pseudonymous commenters"). And forcing me to pick a profile every time I go to YouTube (leave that until I start commenting/posting stuff, thanks).

robotcookies 12y ago
Yeah,they totally went overboard. The last time I tried to check my G+, they had a dialog asking me for more personal information and wouldn't let me get past it. I closed the window and have not gone back to it since. I was once a supporter of G+ (since I really think facebook needs competition) but I'll likely never try it again.
michaelmior 12y ago
The problem is that creating the account makes at least some small bit of my personal info public which I might really not want to happen.
- Mandelbug 12y ago
  Sounds like an easy default is to keep the profile private until the user chooses to "create" the profile.
  - Pxtl 12y ago
    Exactly. No public posts? No public profile. Mention to the user that they're doing something "profile-oriented" that's going to start appearing on their profile if you really want to do the silly "activity-log" approach to a home-page (that is, every YouTube video or Blogger post the user likes and comments appears on their page) - once the user starts doing actions in public, that's the time to lazily create the public page, and that's the time to ask the user the hard question of "hey, I'm going to start collecting all your public commentary and public likes into a single place so everybody can see the stuff you say and like, is this good? yes? Awesome. No? Let me set up a pseudonym for you to do that" Google obviously wanted people who were active public commenters/contributors on their properties (YouTube, Picasa, and Blogger) to automagically be part of Plus, and that's not a terrible idea (obviously treating commenting and sharing as the exact same operation without distinguishing it to the reader is a terrible idea, but that's just a detail). But why foist Plus on all the lurkers? Lurkers don't add value to Plus anyways.

zacharycohn 12y ago

Now if only they'd offer the ability to merge G+ accounts. Somehow, I have two. Which means I have two youtube accounts, which is a constant fiasco.

bborud 12y ago

So they are giving up now? This makes me so angry. The main reason I gave up on Google+ is because they are clearly not going to address the things that people see as problems. Like the useless notification scheme. I mean HOW HARD CAN IT BE TO PUT THAT ON AN OKR AND GET IT DONE!? Get someone to own G+ who gives a fuck and give it another try.

RegW 12y ago

Is there (somewhere out there) a protocol for a distributed social network where participants have control?

robin_reala 12y ago
Sounds like Diaspora: https://joindiaspora.com/ https://joindiaspora.com/