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Why Google+ Failed

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Re: Why Google+ Failed

#291

Post by SkyBelow »

Karunamon wrote: post #277
irrational wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the + doesn't mean what we thought it meant. Google + Evil

I’d prefer we reserve evil for things that actually hurt people out of malice, not poor product design. Otherwise that term becomes useless.

While talking about the designs of villains is a bit out of scope of the original topic, I find the best bad guys are those who are evil not out of some concept of general malice but instead pursuing some perhaps even agreeable goal with poor implementation and disregard for the harms caused.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#292

Post by mikestew »

bduerst wrote: post #235
znpy wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was an IC6 at Google IC6 meaning... ?

Job level. At Google the different job roles are separated into ladders, with the number representing the how high you've climbed. IC6 isn't director level but it's far from entry-level. Invoking their job level like this at the opening of their comment is an appeal to authority. Edit: This comment is being misunderstood. Not saying it's a fallacy - appealing to authority is not always illogical.

It's not an "appeal to authority", it's a qualification to speak on the subject. I used to work at Microsoft, but why would you care about my guess as to the internal workings of the Google+ team?

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#293

Post by s09dfhks »

AJ007 wrote: post #232
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…

Thanks for the insight on this from an internal point of view. I've been trying to figure out how Google transitioned from being viewed as having the moral high ground over most other public companies, tech and otherwise, to the sad state it is in today. Based on everything I've read to this point, my best guess has been dysfunctional management. What you describe sounds like basic blunders rather than any sort of mi…

Too many MBAs in management who've been told they're world changers because of where their degree is from.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#294

Post by dna_polymerase »

Andrex wrote: post #283
asdf21 wrote: post #268

It's legit just not caring about customers. - Want to keep using RSS? Fuck you. - Want to keep using Google Wave? Fuck you. - Want support on your adsense account? Lol, nope. - Account got banned or limited inappropriately? Fuck you. - Want to keep your YouTube and Google accounts separate? Fuck you. - Want to get your domain whitelisted in Gmail? Fuck you. I could go on and on.. They simply do not care about their c…

A customer is someone who pays for a service, and I'm not sure the listed examples qualify.

People keep repeating this bullshit, but it is wrong. People using their services, albeit free of charge, are their customers. They are the ones who click on ads. They are the ones who drive most of their revenue. Everything around search serves the same purpose: keep people happy on their platform so they keep using search and click ads.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#295

Post by aurizon »

Apple sent Agents Provocatuer to sign up and try to add all the shit Apple knew was failmodery. So hookers, thieves, pests, and other conpeople infested the place soon drove people out. The hangout eyes = horrible. Once Apple did this, it was snakebit and doomed to die...

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#296

Post by pessimizer »

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…

Did it make a dime? If it didn't, I doubt that it would be considered an amazing success.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#297

Post by dullgiulio »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #120
gravitas wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really think the author missed this social point, and it's an extremely important one. As a tech nerd, I had fellow tech nerds who had G+ but I was unable to secure an invite, like many others. It was just frustrating and caused people to develop an anti-G+ attitude before they could even get onto the service. I distinctly recall a wave (lasted about... 2 weeks?) of serious internet hype where many contacts on Face…

Speaking of wave, Google wave too. Really excellent idea, but if you couldn't collaborate with anyone but yourself (because of invites), you aren't really "collaborating" and all the benefits of wave are lost.

Indeed, it's funny that Slack is going IPO these days and they have (in some ways) developed a successful Wave.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#298

Post by stallmanite »

waqf wrote: post #260
Nican wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "Kennedy" comment really made me giggle. I have some dislike for some trends of applications addining great amounts of white space. I have to agree that the interface, and the "Real Names" requirements were the two biggest hurdles for me to even to start to like Google+. I really liked the concept of circles, but whenever I did get around to using the social network, it never felt as social and engaging as Twitte…

If only Google could invent a discussion site with rich text and threaded discussions … they could call it "Google Wave" …

Or even https://groups.google.com

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#299

Post by oneshot908 »

jfarmer wrote: post #208
unreal37 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I took `oneshot908 as saying that the Google+ team had a broadly isolationist attitude. Their distance from both co-workers / potential internal contributors and customers/users was a reflection of this and that trickled down into poor product decisions.

Yes, you got it. I made up the "Dark Tower" remark because they sat the Google+ team on the top floor of the only semi-highrise on the main Mountain View campus. This separated them both literally and figuratively from the rest of the Googlers and in 2011, that was just not "googly." And yes, this was a Vic Gundotra move.

I love a good skunkworks project. But Google+ needed Google to succeed. Apparently Vic felt otherwise and the rest is history, no?

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#300

Post by hunter23 »

I find it ironic that the author is trying to detail core reasons why Google+ failed when they themselves admit they don't use any social media.

While I didn't work on the Google plus team (I was on a different team), the biggest reason in my mind why Google+ failed was motivation. Not a single Google executive on the team had a strong reason for why they should build Google+ besides "we can make a better version of Facebook". There was no real use case.

Facebook, at the time, however had engineers and product managers who were intensely driven and hungry; they were in a fight for their existence against some of the biggest companies in the world. If they failed their company would fail, and they were hugely passionate about what they were doing. For Googlers, it was largely a theoretical intellectual experiment. Tons of Googlers on Emerald Sea didn't even use any of the social media tools and they didn't get "social". To them it was some thing you plug on top of an existing product to increase ad revenue.

If you don't have the drive and you don't understand your users, you aren't going to build something people want.

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