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Why Google+ Failed

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Re: Why Google+ Failed

#311

Post by hunter23 »

khazhou wrote: post #250
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…

This reminds me of Wave. Wave team's isolationism didn't cause them to fail, but no one was inclined to help them when they struggled. But these are symptoms. The Dark Tower was because of Vic, no? Maybe Bradley too, but mostly Vic. Vic was a virus against which Google had no immunity. "Do it my way or your career is over". Well, his direction sucked, and that's what you get when you give full trust and power to the…

Yea but the root problem lies in Larry's management. Larry gave Vic pure dictatorial powers for Google+ without holding him accountable for real results. They gave him way too much budget, control, engineers, etc. And they waited way way way too long before kicking him out when things weren't working.

The engineering headcount was ridiculous for Google+. It was also ridiculous to have OKRs for every team at Google to integrate with Google+. Facebook (or really any company) didn't start with Mark Zuckerberg hiring a 1000 engineers and start cranking. If a VC cut him a check for $500 million after his MVP Facebook would probably be a failure. Instead he built the MVP with a few engineers and increased headcount as he increased the user base and shifted vision. Google had this mistaken notion that they could just throw more engineers at the problem and skip the whole product discovery process.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#312

Post by chrshawkes »

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…

I've personally known this for a decade and I'm glad people are finally getting pissed off with Google's arbitrary stranglehold on the rules and regulations of the WWW. You either play by their rules or you go out of business. Their rules suck though. AMP can go straight to hell.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#313

Post by [deleted] »

johnnycab wrote: post #261
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. Thanks for providing a great insight. I kept away from Google+ due to it's initial aggressiveness of opting in and linking it across other services. There was already a growing disillusionment aroun…

[deleted]

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#315

Post by TracePearson »

"But the thought of someone coming along and making a new social network, one that doesn’t have Facebook’s flaws, seems hopeless. After all, if Google, with all its vast wealth and talent, couldn’t do it, then who could?"

Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat... The greater issue to me doesn't seem to be who can beat Facebook but rather, what's going to keep Facebook from buying up any real threat that's not backed by one of the big 5 tech giants.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#316

Post by cannonedhamster »

Marazan wrote: post #229
zippergz wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The irony here is that no one in this comment chain is using their real name, which proves the point that there are indeed chilling effects on speech when you could be punished for a simple difference of opinion. Real names is what made me drop g+. If I want to publish something as me, I don't want another platform controlling that for me. I absolutely concur with your comment that for the people this was big for, it was huge. For the rest of the population there was no compelling reason to switch.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#317

Post by georgeecollins »

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…

I also think they have issues with developers because they abandon technologies that they push for a while and constantly break backward compatibility. A lot of times they are doing this with a good technical intent. But its like they are telling you that you need to invest in retooling your apps for their platforms. If it isn't worth it to you-- too bad so sad.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#318

Post by WalterBright »

nradov wrote: post #302
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…

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 l…

The classic of this is the Lockheed Skunkworks. It's success has never been repeated - lots of companies try to create a skunkworks clone, but try to fix it, and wind up thereby breaking it.

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

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#319

Post by netwanderer3 »

hunter23 wrote: post #300

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…

That's my thought as well. Google+ seemed like just another "me too" platform. Though Google attempted to steer it into another direction later but it was simply too late by then.

What I found hard to believe was that with all the brightest, smartest, most creative people at Google, yet they couldn't figure out a better use case for the platform during all those years? That should have been easy compared to other much harder problems that Google were able to solve successfully.

Similarly, if we think about it Yelp really has no rights to be in the small business index/listing/reviews space. Google own two biggest weapons in "Search Engine" and "Maps" and they completely dominate these two markets, so why was Yelp allowed to get to where it is today I'll never understand?

I don't know why they still have not done this but if they really want to, Google could easily leverage these two tools plus Google Cloud Platform to turn Google main search page into a Global Store where end users could simply enter a product name into the search box and Google will immediately locate it on Google Maps at various stores near where they are with real time stock availability. Users then can quickly go and pick up the item they want in person at the location they prefer. They don't even have to wait for shipping.

Google could develop an easy and intuitive front-end app for small businesses to list their products and update their stock (or use some kinds of tracking technology like beacon), then tie more advanced machine learning and big data analytics features to their Google Cloud Platform for bigger companies that have the needs for such data.

This helps reducing much friction and shorten the purchase funnel for end users who are searching to buy a specific product. At the moment, users must navigate through a sea of websites of which are mostly irrelevant, even after finding a potential website users again must find their way around the store to see whether it even carries or has the product in stock. Can't find the right product or zero stock availability? Well too bad, start again from scratch!

By reducing these steps, Google can effectively help users save much of their time and quickly locate the product they want right on Google Maps. People do not really care about vendors or companies, they only care about the products as that’s really what they’re looking for. Small businesses will also benefit greatly from features like this one since they won’t have to spend more time and money to locate buyers, now buyers just come to them directly.

Google Search + Maps have just become a global retail store overnight.

Re: Why Google+ Failed

#320

Post by BookmarkSaver »

el_programmador wrote: post #133
x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they did that because of how well it worked for GMail. And Facebook was restricted too in the beginning. Obviously, Google+ didn't benefit from following the precedents set by other successful launches.

GMail's time was different, there was a lot less competition among web services back then.

No, the difference with Gmail is that email doesn't require a network effect to be useful. If I'm the only one on G+, it is pointless. If I'm the only one on Gmail, it's just as useful as if everyone I know is on Gmail.
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