Why Google+ Failed • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#221

Post by CondensedBrain » Thu, Jun 20, 2019, 4:53 PM UTC

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #129

mattkevan wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feels like the same people responsible for Mircrosoft's product decisions in the 2000s have now all moved to Google, with a slight twist in strategy. When a Microsoft product didn't do well they called it something different and relaunched, hoping no-one realised it was the same old thing – e.g. Zune Music/Xbox Music/MSN Music/Groove Music/Microsoft Store etc. Google now* just kills it and launches something else, so…

Is there a list of Google services somewhere? I'm always astonished at how I only hear of SOO many of their services only in their obituary.

There's a whole Wikipedia page for it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#222

Post by dredmorbius » Thu, Jun 20, 2019, 4:59 PM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #179

dredmorbius wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a frequently-repeated view, but I find it completely implausible. A social network's initial frowth phase is completely predicated on it being a space people want to join, and that is accomplished by its delivering value and appeal. That might be compelling content, compelling connections, or a mix of the two. A cultivated and exclusive club, as with the Haevard Facebook, or early Usenet, has appeal. It's the…

The thing with Harvard Facebook is that it's a predefined social circle that came online as a unit. If you go to Harvard, most of your friends and people you regularly interact with are also going to Harvard, so you have a cohesive group altogether. With Google+, invites were more or less random, so in a group of 5 friends maybe 3 got one and 2 didn't. Were the 3 people who got invites supposed to just drop their oth…

The early G+ was similar in regards to early Slashdot or Reddit: Tech / SV insiders, Googlers and Xooglers and their extended notworks.

Expanding beyond this, especially to Google's other natural affinity group, advertisers and marketers, did far more harm than good to the service IMO.

The actual invite-only period only lasted a few months -- it was general-access by late September 2011:

https://www.cnn.com/2011/09/20/tech/web/google-plus-public/i...

Facebook's closed period lasted years.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#223

Post by heptathorp » Thu, Jun 20, 2019, 4:59 PM UTC

trevize1138 wrote: post #119

imgabe wrote: post #117

I think a lot of it came down to their "invite-only" launch. I remember a lot of my friends were excited to try it. Some of us were able to get invites, some weren't. Eventually the people who couldn't get on right away just said "screw it" and went back to Facebook. The rest of us followed because that's where we could interact with everyone and not just the people who happened to get on Google+. By the time it open…

Sounds like they were trying to emulate the early days of FB some people pine for where you had to have a .edu email address to sign up. I know a few friend were hopeful that Google+ meant they would no longer see posts from their racist uncle or gullible aunt. Start out with that same kind of exclusivity and hopefully it builds this exclusive mystique so when you open it up to everybody you get a flood. Perhaps the…

Problem is even though Facebook was restricted to a very small set of people, each of them could interact with most/all of the people they wanted to (other college students). Same was not true for Google+, people didn't have enough invites to give to all of their friends.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#224

Post by phicoh » Thu, Jun 20, 2019, 5:00 PM UTC

zippergz wrote: post #213

oneshot908 wrote: post #157

I was an IC6 at Google when Google+ launched... From my perspective, I think partitioning the Google+ team into their own Dark Tower with their own super-healthy cafeteria that was for them and their executives alone was the biggest problem. IMO this even foreshadows separating off Google Brain from the rest of Google and giving them resources not available to anyone else. Google was at its best a relatively open cul…

I hate responding to anecdata with anecdata, but my experience is that Real Names was a HUGE DEAL in a very small and specific sector of the internet (some of which has clear overlap with HN), and an absolute non-story in the rest of the world. I worked at G at that time also, and while I agree that Real Names was a dumb decision, at the time I did not see any direct impact on interest or engagement from my friends b…

G+ sometimes resembles the way Mozilla develops Firefox: Lots of aspects make just a small group unhappy. However, taken together all of those unhappy groups mean that you have no early adopters left and the project fails to get traction.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#225

Post by shearskill » Thu, Jun 20, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

pbuzbee wrote: post #182

I think Google+ failed first and foremost because there wasn't any reason to switch. First, it didn't make sense that people would quickly leave an established network (FB) to join a new empty network. At this time, most folks who wanted to join a network had finally joined FB. It took a lot of time and momentum for FB to reach that point. Google+ didn't offer anything fundamentally different from Facebook: it was ve…

Oddly enough kids are using GDocs for messaging in school and during study sessions, etc. Not something to build a network around since they are used as ephemeral ad hoc chat spaces.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#226

Post by nashashmi » Thu, Jun 20, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #206

oneshot908 wrote: post #157

I was an IC6 at Google when Google+ launched... From my perspective, I think partitioning the Google+ team into their own Dark Tower with their own super-healthy cafeteria that was for them and their executives alone was the biggest problem. IMO this even foreshadows separating off Google Brain from the rest of Google and giving them resources not available to anyone else. Google was at its best a relatively open cul…

Google was at its best a relatively open culture and 2011 is the year they killed other cultural icons such as Google Labs and (unofficially) deprecated 20% time. I think the road to the Google we see today started then. It's also the year they paid too much for Motorola and started pushing Marissa Mayer out the door. Something about this rings true. it was really disappointing to see a potential Facebook killer die…

Plus one. For everything you said.

I hated Google plus for how open they forced everyone on it to be. VS Facebook was private in its beginning.

I hated Google plus because they forced all of their services to begin to rely on it. They forced various logins to use it.

I have stopped using play store comments and YouTube for this very reason.

Had they split Google plus into parts where people adopted it slowly they would have fared better. Parts like friend network-1, forum network-2, news network-3, share page-4, posts page-5, etc.

I still remember when they replaced Facebook and Twitter search results with GOOGLE plus results.

And the bonuses part is why this makes so much sense about why they did it.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#227

Post by unreal37 » Thu, Jun 20, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

sumanthvepa wrote: post #49

I have to disagree with the author. Google+ did not fail. Had it been a startup rather than a Google project, it would have been considered an amazing success. The problem was that the goal of being a Facebook killer was just too ambitious. Had it instead been a social feature amongst Google products it might have served valuable purpose for both Google and its users. Sadly, in a large corporation, every project has…

"90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds."

By most actual metrics, Google+ was a failure. 90% of people went there "accidentally". They were trying to do something useful, travel to somewhere useful on the Internet, and clicking the plus.google.com link was a mistake!

90%!

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#228

Post by coldtea » Thu, Jun 20, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

unreal37 wrote: post #197

oneshot908 wrote: post #157

I was an IC6 at Google when Google+ launched... From my perspective, I think partitioning the Google+ team into their own Dark Tower with their own super-healthy cafeteria that was for them and their executives alone was the biggest problem. IMO this even foreshadows separating off Google Brain from the rest of Google and giving them resources not available to anyone else. Google was at its best a relatively open cul…

Blaming the failure of Google+ on "they had their own cafeteria that we weren't allowed to go to" and "they got bonuses we didn't get" seems really really inside baseball. Shows the problems inside Google, yes. But that's not why it never really took off.

Problems inside Google's and a disconnect from the reality of the company could very well be why they never really took off.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#229

Post by Marazan » Thu, Jun 20, 2019, 5:06 PM UTC

zippergz wrote: post #213

oneshot908 wrote: post #157

I was an IC6 at Google when Google+ launched... From my perspective, I think partitioning the Google+ team into their own Dark Tower with their own super-healthy cafeteria that was for them and their executives alone was the biggest problem. IMO this even foreshadows separating off Google Brain from the rest of Google and giving them resources not available to anyone else. Google was at its best a relatively open cul…

I hate responding to anecdata with anecdata, but my experience is that Real Names was a HUGE DEAL in a very small and specific sector of the internet (some of which has clear overlap with HN), and an absolute non-story in the rest of the world. I worked at G at that time also, and while I agree that Real Names was a dumb decision, at the time I did not see any direct impact on interest or engagement from my friends b…

Realnames stopped influencers who didn't use their Realnames from signing up.

If you didn't have contact with either marginalised groups who as a matter of survival didn't use their real name or ancient extremely online people who for the entirety of their internet experience had been known as a handle it wouldn't have crossed your radar.

But it was a huge thing.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#230

Post by sah2ed » Thu, Jun 20, 2019, 5:08 PM UTC

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #171

trevize1138 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like they were trying to emulate the early days of FB some people pine for where you had to have a .edu email address to sign up. I know a few friend were hopeful that Google+ meant they would no longer see posts from their racist uncle or gullible aunt. Start out with that same kind of exclusivity and hopefully it builds this exclusive mystique so when you open it up to everybody you get a flood. Perhaps the…

Facebook had what turned out to be an accidentally brilliant way of bootstrapping networks and trust. Fundamental problem: social networks with no-one on them are not fun and not sticky. Fundamental problem 2: if anyone can read what you're writing, it's not a social network, it's a blog. So you can't just let anyone see what people are writing. The way FB handled that in the early days was that by default, people in…

Facebook started out as a social network where you could get what we today regard as PII (e.g phone numbers of the opposite gender and such) for Harvard students, and its engagement numbers were really good (based on Zuck’s previous experience with the Harvard-only FaceMash).

They would later expand to other Ivy league schools — aka networks — one by one, rather than simultaneously, as a way to slow their growth.

I imagine an unintended side effect of this growth strategy was the sense of FOMO that it engendered among university students that had heard about but couldn’t join the exclusive/elusive Facebook, unlike the other social networks like Friendster, Hi5 etc.

For each network on their expansion list, Zuck & team would furiously scrape the student directory to seed the new network with plausible student info.