Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google login now requires Google+ Account

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 63 posts

Re: Google login now requires Google+ Account

#51

Post by cromwellian »

frostmatthew wrote: post #49
cromwellian wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some would say having your family members avoid G+ is one of the primary benefits of G+. So instead of being barraged by a stream of photos of cousins and aunts you haven't seen in decades, or discussing family gossip, you get to engage in interesting conversations based on people with similar strong interests in particular topics. None of the people I follow on G+ are 'friends' with the exception of co-workers, inst…

That doesn't sound like a very good "primary benefit" since Google's strategy is clearly to get as many people to use G+ as possible. Either a) they'll be successful and your G+ stream will be barraged by "photos of cousins and aunts" anyway or b) it's not successful and they pull the plug.

I don't think it's either-or. Even if they show up, G+ is by default, an asymmetric model. And G+ isn't just about the "stream". Google would have done something like G+ anyway to unify 40+ services. You might be right that they want more than a niche audience, on the other hand, Google does want to elevate the public square.

Having a segmented by interest social network is a primary benefit. I come to HackerNews not because I'm friends with anyone here, but because I can interact with interesting people here. It's also why I go to G+ every. The level of dialogue on G+ is much better than Facebook on average, and the G+ communities are a lot better than Facebook pages.

Re: Google login now requires Google+ Account

#52

Post by cromwellian »

cromwellian wrote: post #31
6d0debc071 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google used to have a separate profile system just like profiles.yahoo.com, and like Yahoo, having lots of disparate services with weak unification was a problem. No, it wasn't. It was very simple. You want an account for youtube, sign up on youtube, you want an account for something else - sign up there. You want your accounts to be the same login across all the services? Use the same login across all the services…

Having to create a separate account on N services with the same credentials is simpler than having a unified account? And what if your login is already taken on one of the other services, now you're forced to have multiple credentials. And then when you need to update something, like change an email address, 2factor authentication, or some other feature, you've now got to edit settings on many services. If you want a…

It's somewhat worse than just KN, because if you have say, an iOS or Android tablet, then you'll have apps for YouTube, Gmail, Maps, Talk, Picassa, Drive, etc If you had to sign in to every once of those mobile apps the number of devices you own, it would be very very irritating.

As it is now, you add your account to your Android phone, or Chrome single-sign-on and you're done.

Re: Google login now requires Google+ Account

#53

Post by turing »

frostmatthew wrote: post #50
turing wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really fair. Google has been pretty good about defining activity on G+, much more so than either Twitter or Facebook. For example, they give individual numbers for total users visiting G+ on web/mobile, people using G+ features across all products (+1s, shares, comments), and total number of accounts.

Source? (all I've ever heard is that Google considers someone an "active" G+ user if they have a G+ account and have used any Google product over the period in question)

http://marketingland.com/google-hits-135-million-users-27904

"According to new Google figures, Google+ now has 135 million active users, with 235 million active users when counting Google properties with Google+ features, and 500 million with Google+ enabled accounts."

Re: Google login now requires Google+ Account

#54

Post by turing »

plg wrote: post #39
turing wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, why are you so vehemently opposed to having an account? You could very easily just not provide public profile information, never post, and never add anyone.

which begs the question ... why do I need a G+ account? It's not like I am asking google to implement some ability that has previously been not implemented... rather google has decided to eliminate a little piece of choice ... or freedom ... or whatever you want to call it ... for their users. Why? Because it's better for them. Which brings one back to something that has been posted many many times ... you are not th…

"why do I need a G+ account?" "Because it's better for them."

You've answered your own question. I also believe that the customer vs product issue is much more nuanced than most people portray it to be.

Re: Google login now requires Google+ Account

#55

Post by TrevorJ »

cromwellian wrote: post #6

What's with the Google Derangement Syndrome on HN recently? Any change in any Google service prompts the same "I'm taking all my toys and going home" response. Google used to have a separate profile system just like profiles.yahoo.com, and like Yahoo, having lots of disparate services with weak unification was a problem. G+ is that unifying profile layer. Is it really beyond the pale for a service to prompt you to en…

The issue as I see it is that there's a certain non-zero chance of getting your account suspended from service x or y, sometimes for reasons that are not common sense or self-evident. Considering how integral Google Drive and Gmail are to many people's workflow, it isn't good that you are forced, in effect to take on more risk by having so many services linked to it.

As an example, there were cases of people losing access to Gmail after signing up for Google+ with a birthday that was too young to comply with the G+ TOS. Another example - it is fairly trivial to get an Adsense account suspended by using a script to commit click fraud against the target account. Similar things can be done to an ad-enabled Youtube channel. It's not outside the realm of possibility at all that a third party could cause you to lose access to your email account through one of these methods if your accounts are linked.

Re: Google login now requires Google+ Account

#56

Post by frostmatthew »

turing wrote: post #53
frostmatthew wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? (all I've ever heard is that Google considers someone an "active" G+ user if they have a G+ account and have used any Google product over the period in question)

http://marketingland.com/google-hits-135-million-users-27904 "According to new Google figures, Google+ now has 135 million active users, with 235 million active users when counting Google properties with Google+ features, and 500 million with Google+ enabled accounts."

Thanks, that's interesting, I've only seen the "active users when counting Google properties with Google+ features" type numbers but nice to see a number (135m) for actually using G+ (probably higher now since that link is a few months old). Though I disagree with your [original] statement that Google is "defining activity" much more so than Facebook http://newsroom.fb.com/content/default.aspx?NewsAreaId=22

Re: Google login now requires Google+ Account

#57

Post by turing »

frostmatthew wrote: post #56
turing wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://marketingland.com/google-hits-135-million-users-27904 "According to new Google figures, Google+ now has 135 million active users, with 235 million active users when counting Google properties with Google+ features, and 500 million with Google+ enabled accounts."

Thanks, that's interesting, I've only seen the "active users when counting Google properties with Google+ features" type numbers but nice to see a number (135m) for actually using G+ (probably higher now since that link is a few months old). Though I disagree with your [original] statement that Google is "defining activity" much more so than Facebook http://newsroom.fb.com/content/default.aspx?NewsAreaId=22

It is nice that they break up mobile from the total and that they provide daily active users. That said, I didn't see anything on that page that actually defined what they mean by 'active', so I think my point still stands. Then again, it's known Facebook usage is, for the time being at least, significantly higher than G+, so I guess it doesn't really matter.

Re: Google login now requires Google+ Account

#59

Post by gaara87 »

Lagged2Death wrote: post #33

Yes, I was required to set up a Google+ account some time ago to re-log-in to YouTube or Picasa Web Albums - I don't remember which. The description of what was going on didn't make it clear to me that following the prescribed steps would create a Google+ account, but that was the effect. However, there was a saving grace, as far as I'm concerned. I was allowed to remove my real name from my Google account and use my…

I think its picasa

Re: Google login now requires Google+ Account

#60

Post by adityarajbhatt »

tekacs wrote: post #14
svitcov wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Google just wanted me to add a few relevant details to my primary account for some obvious useful purpose, details that would be kept private, I would happily oblige. However, this goes beyond that: Google is asking me to share information with no apparent application use (birth date?! gender???) to ANYONE who stumbles upon my G+ profile. I am not against unifying their services - in fact, this is what Google's ba…

You don't actually have to share those details publicly if you don't want, to be fair. :/ Edit: for comparison and openness's sake, my profile: https://plus.google.com/116103902550362700148/about I have few qualms about sharing that, given that I know exactly what I've shared from there.

Wow, Cambridge! And yes, the profile privacy options are extensive and are painless to setup. I fully suppport the single-sign on.
Post reply on HN