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You know, Google, the web already had this feature

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Re: You know, Google, the web already had this feature

#171

Post by philwelch »

omegaham wrote: post #85
philwelch wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mean correlates with stupid. More stupid people watch TV than read. YouTube is TV.

It's a little bit more complicated than that. Every smart person I know browses Youtube. Youtube isn't like a TV network; most videos are only a few minutes long, so it's not inherently a timesuck the way that watching an hour long drama is. The difference is that because Youtube has no moderation in its comments, smart people look at the comments and immediately decide that it's not worth their time. So, the only pe…

Right, but every dumb person you know browses YouTube as well, and comment quality is pulled down by dumb people more easily than it can be pulled up by smart people.

Anything that requires actual reading already has a barrier to entry to the dumbest of the dumb.

Re: You know, Google, the web already had this feature

#172

Post by philwelch »

mercutio2 wrote: post #120
omegaham wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a little bit more complicated than that. Every smart person I know browses Youtube. Youtube isn't like a TV network; most videos are only a few minutes long, so it's not inherently a timesuck the way that watching an hour long drama is. The difference is that because Youtube has no moderation in its comments, smart people look at the comments and immediately decide that it's not worth their time. So, the only pe…

Really? Why in the world would they do that? Effectively zero of the smart people I know browse YouTube. Most of my programmer friends listen to podcasts, but I honestly have no idea what smart people do with YouTube.

It's still a decently authoritative source for music.

Re: You know, Google, the web already had this feature

#173

Post by turing »

coldtea wrote: post #157
sshumaker wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're fixating on Google+ as a social network, when that's not really the point. Google+ is meant to serve as an identity layer for Google, so you don't have a bunch of different logins / passwords to silo-ed properties, which makes a frustrating user experience. They give you pretty damn good tools for deciding what parts of the identity are shared for this exact reason. You can enable Google+ and basically…

> I think you're fixating on Google+ as a social network, when that's not really the point. Google+ is meant to serve as an identity layer for Google, so you don't have a bunch of different logins / passwords to silo-ed properties, which makes a frustrating user experience. No, it's not meant like that at all. Google didn't create Google+ to have a single sign on. It created it specifically to compete with Facebook.…

"No, it's not meant like that at all."

Cool, so it's your baseless opinion vs Google's public stance on their motivations. How productive.

"I, for one, never wanted my YouTube account linked to my Gmail account etc."

I'm sorry that you feel entitled to have Google bend to your will with regards to their high-quality services for which you pay nothing.

Re: You know, Google, the web already had this feature

#174

Post by GHFigs »

philwelch wrote: post #49
doktrin wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google and YouTube are full of smart people. Some kind of "poor comment quality" filter should be easy to implement. This touches on something I actually feel deserves a second look, if only from an academic or sociological perspective. I have never quite understood why Youtube appears to be the single largest (or, at least most prominent) internet cesspool. Comments there are routinely among the most vile I've see…

Mean correlates with stupid. More stupid people watch TV than read. YouTube is TV.

I've found grim proof of this by observing people at shared computers in public libraries. It's not simply people watching a video now and then, but dozens of people spending their entire allotment of time watching YouTube as they would watch TV, amidst a sea of free books.

Re: You know, Google, the web already had this feature

#175

Post by kunai »

NewAccnt wrote: post #129
kunai wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing Google Glass does that my smartphone already can't. And how is Apple waging war against openness? WebKit is open-source. They're pushing HTML5 against Flash (open vs proprietary). Darwin (OS X without Quartz and DPS) is open source. A few of the apps included with OS X are open-source. Google cars? Driverless car research has been going on for years, both before and alongside Google. Look, I'm not ba…

HTML5 is not standard, certainly not open. Everyone abandoned WebKit for some unknown reason having to do with Apple. Please list these OSS Apps, I would love to know since Google and Wikpedia say nothing like that.

TextEdit and Chess are two.

Re: You know, Google, the web already had this feature

#176

Post by kunai »

ender7 wrote: post #163
coldtea wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then stop using their products. Switch to bing, switch to Internet Explorer, get an iPhone and shut up about it. And who exactly are you to tell him to "shut up about it"? He made his case. You might disagree. State your case and let the discussion continue. Anything else --like telling him to "shup up"-- should be beneath HN standards. For one, people do use alternative products. It's not as if Chrome is the ultim…

I don't know, he/she didn't really "make a case". Read it again -- the OP doesn't actually say anything in the grandparent post besides "they used to be great, but now I hate them". Why does the OP hate them? Who knows! The fact that such a contentless diatribe is at #1 is depressing. That too should be beneath HN's standards.

> Why does the OP hate them? Who knows!

I quite clearly stated this in my post. Everything that isn't research-based, or what is user-oriented, like Google+, YouTube, etc. has been milked to death and ruined in the process.

Other things, like how they consistently buy off startups and kill them, also annoy the hell out of me.

> The fact that such a contentless diatribe is at #1 is depressing. That too should be beneath HN's standards.

Obviously opinions, while mixed, account for half of reasoning. Opinions seem to be in the favor that Google has lost its way.

Re: You know, Google, the web already had this feature

#177

Post by cloverich »

kaoD wrote: post #105
pkulak wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're acting like the act of "joining" is some huge deal. You already have an account with Google. "Joining" Google+ probably flips 3 bits in some BigTable database somewhere. The only reason you are getting so self-righteous about it is because Google is giving you the option. If you don't _do_ anything on Google+, what's it matter? Interesting that you bring up you Facebook anti-creds. Do you also not own a TV?

Joining IS a huge deal. Lots of things are getting shared when you have a Google+ account, most of which I don't want to share (e.g. which YouTube videos I like, my Google Play comments...) and have to be turned off explicitly. I know this because I once was a Google+ user for a short time (during which I didn't even notice). When I mentioned Facebook I just meant: "I'm not into the biggest and most useful social net…

> and have to be turned off explicitly.

Why is `opt-out` a big deal?

Re: You know, Google, the web already had this feature

#178

Post by ori_b »

notatoad wrote: post #161
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, the web of the 90s was really awesome. I remember one of the first things I did when I got online was look up Star Wars websites (using Webcrawler). There were dozens of sites, all made by fans, all amateur, all full of cheesy graphics, .wav sounds, but all unique. Here's the Google results for "Star wars". Tell me when you get to a result that wasn't created by a corporation: https://www.google.com/q=sta…

The web of the 90s was an awesome exclusive subculture. The web google has been promoting is inclusive and egalitarian. It isn't just for nerds, and cares about things other than Star Wars.

I think the word you're looking for is "corporate". It's not google's fault, of course. It's just the way the world works when money is involved. Large organizations that stood to make a profit were going to change it significantly to raise their margins, no matter what.

The web of the 1990s was far more open to participation outside of the walled gardens. It may have been more difficult to get started with, but it was definitely more inclusive.

Re: You know, Google, the web already had this feature

#179

Post by ori_b »

cloverich wrote: post #177
kaoD wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joining IS a huge deal. Lots of things are getting shared when you have a Google+ account, most of which I don't want to share (e.g. which YouTube videos I like, my Google Play comments...) and have to be turned off explicitly. I know this because I once was a Google+ user for a short time (during which I didn't even notice). When I mentioned Facebook I just meant: "I'm not into the biggest and most useful social net…

> and have to be turned off explicitly. Why is `opt-out` a big deal?

Because settings change. I don't know if tomorrow Google is going to add a new feature to share new things, and I don't want to watch for new things to opt out of. It's a cognitive load I don't need.

Re: You know, Google, the web already had this feature

#180

Post by Shank »

blantonl wrote: post #107
kunai wrote: post #2

Google has overstayed the web's welcome. What started out as a quirky, innovative company that bucked all of the suit-and-tie trends (see Microsoft, HP, even Apple in some regards) of Silicon Valley, has now turned into a monstrous calamity with no regard for its users. Up until 2009, it was breezy and beautiful, but right now, at this moment, it's a different story altogether. Don't be evil? Pfeh. The only thing lef…

Don't be evil? Pfeh. Google is a publicly traded company (Stock Ticker: NASDAQ: GOOG) The demands of the shareholders and board of directors outweighs the expectations of Google's users and business partners.

The "Don't be evil" motto was created out of the fact that at the time, other search engines were taking money to show ads higher on the page in search results, without being marked. The methodology is essentially the same as being transparent in how they've executed on that. They're a business, they'll do what's healthy for that business to do. At the same time, however, they're more open and transparent than most Internet companies with what they're doing with data and what they hope to achieve.

I'm tired of people denouncing Google+ as some sort of crazed attempt at creating a Facebook competitor, when Google repeatedly has to clarify that it is simply Google's social fabric. Stream is a competitor to newsfeed, but +1s are displayed in search results (Search Plus Your World), and other recommendation data is spread about Google too. It's primary goal creates a unified identity across all Google services.

If Google were truly being "evil," they'd automatically turn on Google+ for everybody and provide no opt out or no way to leave. They haven't. You can still "downgrade" and remove Google+.

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