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Introducing the new Google+

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Re: Introducing the new Google+

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were many well established search engines readily available when they launched search to.

There were exactly zero good search engines at the time, however. Google was exponentially better than anything else from day 1.

AltaVista was good. Google was better than AltaVista, but not exponentially better. It was just a nice improvement - enough to get me to switch.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#132
post #94

Wait wait wait...Google+ still exists?!

If you never define something concretely, no one can say whether the thing exists or not. "Google+" was never any specific service or technology or product, so the term is just a label that Google management can apply to whatever they want.

Google Reader was alive. It's now dead.

Google+? Impossible to say.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#133
post #102

I really don't like multi-column layouts. It's impossible to read. arstechnica is a really good example. There are three columns, each with blocks that are different sizes. So, I end up reading all the headlines from the left column, scrolling back to the stop, reading the second column, then scrolling back up for the third column. I've tried to use Google+ on my Android device and the experience is awful. You get a…

FWIW, you can change the layout on arstechnica: - Hover over Main Menu in the navigation - in the upper right corner of the menu, there is a label "Layout" that has some icons you can click to adjust to a two column layout that is more top-to-bottom friendly.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#134
post #33

Google seem to keep making worse the thing that matters most to me. What I want is to conveniently read. I want to see content, from a variety of sources. I want density. I want to catch up and be aware. It was like that in the earlier days. Every update kept reducing the amount of visible content, and severe reductions in density. Here is a screenshot of my screen - http://i.imgur.com/fM2WIVf.png (1920x1200) - almos…

It's not just a Google thing. Recently there was a HN thread on devmag.io -- they have the same problem. I measured it: in the same space HN gives me 18 stories, Devmag.io gives me barely 2. Unfortunately, I think Google people know and they just don't care. They don't want people who know what RSS is, people who care about information density; they are going after the Pinterest crowd, the sort of people who read Cos…

> they are going after the Pinterest crowd, the sort of people who read Cosmopolitan, watch reality shows, and post drunken pics on Facebook.

Inferring a bit much there?

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#135
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pinterest is kind of like delicious, reddit is kind of like forums, facebook is kind of like myspace, twitter is kind of like irc. There's nothing new. Iteration on a good idea is not a bad thing.

The thing is, everything Google is doing is a lesser form of what it's copying so it's not an iteration. That and they're not just copying one thing they're trying to do everything. Why? All of your examples sought to improve upon one thing, do it well, and do it with focus. My main point is that Google's social products are all over the place. They're firing on all cylinders but not aiming at anything.

I'm guessing they see the integration as an iteration. A lot of people would prefer to have a single sign-on, cross-linking etc. rather than having separate Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#136

Google seem to keep making worse the thing that matters most to me. What I want is to conveniently read. I want to see content, from a variety of sources. I want density. I want to catch up and be aware. It was like that in the earlier days. Every update kept reducing the amount of visible content, and severe reductions in density. Here is a screenshot of my screen - http://i.imgur.com/fM2WIVf.png (1920x1200) - almos…

That screenshot is from the previously existing site, not the new version launched today.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#139
A stunning fact came from a Googler today: https://plus.google.com/+IlyaGrigorik/posts/GzjRiVUED1S

The previous Google+ site took an AVERAGE of 12 seconds to load, and was 22 MB when gzipped. This company, which once wrote a blog called "speed matters", where they announced they'd penalize sites for slow loading, had an average page load of 12 seconds on their social network. (For single-threaded browsers like Firefox, it'd actually freeze up the browser for about ten of those seconds.)

I'm not super fond of the design, but what I am super fond of, is that Google+ no longer crashes my web browser.

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