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Google is making a huge and annoying mistake

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Re: Google is making a huge and annoying mistake

#251

Post by cbr »

jrockway wrote: post #176
adamc wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to say that it sounds like an excellent reason to drop gmail and move away from google products. I don't _want_ advertisers to know more about me.

Advertisers don't know more about you. Google matches advertisements targeted to demographic X with people that meet demographic X. It's like a stock exchange -- you say you want to sell 30 shares of AAPL, and you're anonymously matched with someone that wants to buy 30 shares of AAPL. Only the exchange knows who both parties to the transaction are, protecting you from evil transaction partners. Now, if you don't tru…

"Advertisers don't know more about you."

Only sort of. Let's say I'm doing general advertising but want to know the age and gender of people who click on my ads. So I place ads for "men age 18-20", "men age 21-24", "men age 25-35", ..., "women age 18-20", ... . I give each a different landing url. Then I as the advertiser learn more about my incoming users than I would without targeting. I can't pull all the demographic information the ad network knows because if the buckets are too small things like CTR estimation work poorly, but if I'm high volume I can get good resolution.

Re: Google is making a huge and annoying mistake

#252

Post by Auguste »

jrockway wrote: post #209
Auguste wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Years later, it still annoys me that you need a Google account to sign up for YouTube.

What's the difference between having a Google account and a YouTube account? Google owns YouTube.

I liked being able to have a separate YouTube account to my Google account. Actually, I like having separate accounts for everything.

Re: Google is making a huge and annoying mistake

#253

Post by fpgeek »

DavidAbrams wrote: post #231
nextparadigms wrote: post #45

In the beginning people complained that Google has like a dozen different "Like" buttons on the Reader, Youtube and so on. Now they complain that they want to use just one everywhere? I think it's a great move. Personally, I even want them to integrate their G+ commenting system into all their services. It's one of the best commenting systems out there, and certainly much better than the Youtube one. It might even en…

"In the beginning people complained that Google has like a dozen different "Like" buttons on the Reader, Youtube and so on" No, they didn't. Who in hell would complain about that? Who cares?

I don't know about "Like" buttons, but I know more than a few people who complain about all of Google's messaging options (Google Talk, Google Voice, Huddle / Google+ Messaging, ...).

Re: Google is making a huge and annoying mistake

#254

Post by BigTigger »

Wilya wrote: post #162
nekojima wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Youtube only account, not linked to any other Google services or their hosted email, and I can up or down vote any of the three videos I just randomly clicked on to check this out.

Err, it most likely is also a Google account, even a basic one, or at least linked to one. Unless you know a trick that I don't. As far as I know, the migration from Youtube accounts to Google accounts has been forced some time ago (I tried to avoid it as long as I could).

Surely it's simple enough to create a google account that's only used for youtube?

We do it on our server at home.

Re: Google is making a huge and annoying mistake

#255

Post by AkThhhpppt »

sad_panda wrote: post #158
adventureful wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of news sites allow voting without being logged in, as well as in the comment sections. Business Insider, the largest business site, allows it (Quantcast #235). It's premised on the notion that for 99.999% of people, they're not going to bother going through any amount of hassle to bolster votes artificially. It works, it's not worth the time or effort to game content and comments that are modest in traffic and…

Not just Reddit, HN derives tremendous value from quality commenting. Commenting with zero accountability (authenticated accounts, voting, flagging, whatever) is basically doomed to be awful and a net negative to the service.

"Very likely to be" - yes, definitely. "Doomed to be" - not even nearly. There are blog communities I've been a part of that knock HN comments out of the ring, with zero friction to comment (a name and email address are required, but that email address is never validated). It's about moderation and caring enough to grow a community, not the specific mechanism you use to do that.

Re: Google is making a huge and annoying mistake

#256

Post by tbatterii »

artursapek wrote: post #120
tbatterii wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Internet is a joke. Nobody outside of the tech and geek industries either wants it or uses it. " sometimes, things change.

That's a terrible comparison. There was no alternative to the internet that did the same things.

"There was no alternative to the internet that did the same things."

And this is a terrible interpretation of what I intended on saying. :)

I was mocking the validity of the parents assertion because I find it has as much credibility as my ridiculous assertion.

Perhaps you were mocking mine? and if so, kudos to you sir.

Re: Google is making a huge and annoying mistake

#257

Post by VikingCoder »

beedogs wrote: post #206
VikingCoder wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Technically, "Anonymous Likes" aren't really susceptible to spamming [Citation Needed] Should content show up higher in Google Search Results, if it is more Liked? By whatever system of Likes you care to design... I say "yes." That makes the "Anonymous Like" system a clear target for Search Engine Optimization. People have to pay for ads. If it turns out that the Conversion numbers for a set of search words are lou…

Just an FYI, your posting style is pretty obnoxious.

sigh Bummer.

If you feel like you have the time, please try to explain roughly the same message that I tried to express, but with a posting style that is not obnoxious.

Re: Google is making a huge and annoying mistake

#258

Post by VikingCoder »

notatoad wrote: post #222
VikingCoder wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're not logged in, then it's a completely meaningless "like." It can be easily spammed, you can't find it again just by knowing you liked it, your Followers have no idea you liked it. It's about as valuable as those old CGI "000000017 people have viewed this page!" And there's a great way to share the item - use the URL. Google is really aggressive about making sure that its web pages, even though they feel lik…

i don't know where this misconception is coming from, but you could never like something on youtube without first logging in. you have always had to be logged in to your google account in order to give a thumbs up.

Kudos - I wish you'd shown up and said this earlier, so I would have gotten fewer upvotes.

Re: Google is making a huge and annoying mistake

#259

Post by Raphael »

DavidAbrams wrote: post #235
jahmed wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I forget that services I use everyday have login pages. I cant remember the last time I logged in to facebook.

Facebook is still trying to use E-mail addresses as user IDs. Amateur hour, just like Apple.

Your custom URL ending also works for signing in to Facebook.

Re: Google is making a huge and annoying mistake

#260

Post by VikingCoder »

saurik wrote: post #233
VikingCoder wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> giving a +1 to a video that could possibly go on your Google+ wall (if that even exists) It does not exist. You can specifically Share a video with Circles. > influence your search results in ways you don't want, In the upper right on your Search page, you can click "Hide personal results." > or show up awkwardly in other strange ways while using other Google products like Gmail [citation needed] > The real problem…

>> giving a +1 to a video that could possibly go on your Google+ wall (if that even exists) > It does not exist. You can specifically Share a video with Circles. https://plus.google.com/109412257237874861202/plusones > +1's are inherently public. > I can appreciate that you like to give feedback to content creators saying, "Hey, I liked this!" Google is tying the "I" in that sentence to your Google+ account. > I thin…

Oh right, forgot about that page. At least I got it right that +1's are inherently public. Oh, and also - tangentially - it doesn't really act like a Wall, because even though I'm following Matt Cutts, I don't see his +1s show up in my Stream. I have to go look for them.
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