Live data from Hacker News

Why Google+ Failed

onezero.medium.com

301–310 of 375 posts

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#301
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…

Some companies try to disrupt markets, but Google tends to disrupt their customers. Not sure that makes sense.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#302

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…

The classic business management book The Innovator's Dilemma specifically recommends moving groups working on potentially disruptive new products into separate facilities. That helps them avoid distractions and makes it harder for "corporate antibodies" to kill the new initiative. Most people think that the IBM PC project succeeded in creating a microcomputer that disrupted the mainframe and minicomputer markets at least partly because they had a separate office in Boca Raton instead of at HQ in Armonk.

http://claytonchristensen.com/books/the-innovators-dilemma/

Of course having a separate facility doesn't guarantee success, and can certainly cause other problems if poorly managed.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#303

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…

"That said, my godawful company man manager would repeatedly proclaim how " I've never worked at Google but am friends with many Googlers. Someone I know was one of these awful company man manager who worked there would just keep defending G+ with these awful spoon fed comments. I stopped bothering trying to say anything about it since it became obvious that the group think has set. He's doing great at Google these d…

It's not surprising the biggest innovations comes from people who leave Google instead of coming from the ones who stay there.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#304
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…

The main reason Google launches popular products by invitation only is to manage server load. Otherwise you get situations like the Pokemon Go launch, where the service was unreliable for the first few months.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#305

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…

"That said, my godawful company man manager would repeatedly proclaim how " I've never worked at Google but am friends with many Googlers. Someone I know was one of these awful company man manager who worked there would just keep defending G+ with these awful spoon fed comments. I stopped bothering trying to say anything about it since it became obvious that the group think has set. He's doing great at Google these d…

I have people on facebook who work at Tesla, and “spoonfed” is a great description for some on their arguments about autopilot etc

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#306

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…

> the biggest problem was getting their own super-healthy cafeteria That's a really bizarre position to take. Every other thing you mentioned sounds a lot more impactful than that.

Psychology. When companies make moves to mark groups and projects as different in some way, it's not really that important what the mechanism is. It could be something objectively cheap and superficial, but still end up being a critical factor in moral and dynamics.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#307

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…

> Kennedy

Glad to finally know that cancer actually has a name. Kennedy made me stop using Google Reader and the GMail web UI.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#308
I remember that my wife and I were late to Facebook, having been convinced by our daughter's babysitter that it made staying in touch with people easier. We built out a Friends list and were having a great time reconnecting with people from our childhood. When Google+ came on our radar the idea of trying to rebuild connections in another platform was not appealing.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does one discover such WhatsApp group chats? In my very limited experience, it is just like other messaging apps; I can't quite imagine how you would use it as a social network. Am I missing something?

I use WhatsApp this way. It's not a matter of discovery-- it's a matter of creating a group with your existing friends and then keeping in touch with them day-to-day through sharing things in the group chat. It's identical to a facebook feed....except it's a tiny one with only the people YOU chose to include, and doesn't get polluted with any external content.

I do similarly with sms/iMessage. It’s actually a great way to keep in touch and seems more “real” than Facebook because it’s me directly and specifically communicating with my friends and the public “performative” aspect is absent.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#310

I think most of the damage from the "real names" policy came from the their sudden and draconian enforcement of it at exactly the wrong time. Just when the service was starting to build momentum, they initiated an effort to find and punish anyone who'd previously signed up with anything that didn't look like a "real name", in many cases locking them out of their entire Google account. And then shortly after that, hav…

One of the worst things to come from this Google+ thing was the removal of the "+" for searching on Google itself. You used to be able to use " +go +lang " and get results that were guaranteed to have those two terms on the page. Now you have to use double quotes and other tricks. sigh
Post reply on HN