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We Need To Talk, Google

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Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#91

Post by v13inc »

VikingCoder wrote: post #84
kenko wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"thing I use to send email" and "thing I use to watch music videos" are not conceptually distinct? Most users would send as emails to others the kinds of things they leave as comments on youtube?

The word "I" showed up in both of those sentences. To most users, unifying all of their data adds a lot of value. Google reads my GMails from major airlines, and shows me when my next flight is when I Google Search for "when is my next flight". The flight also just pops up on Google Now on my Android phone. It also knows where I am, and where the airport is, so it tells me how long it will take to drive there. When I…

The funny thing is that all those features work right now, without unifying your Google accounts.

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#92

Post by v13inc »

VikingCoder wrote: post #88
mrweasel wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that most users understand that Youtube and Google are the same company. Having a single signon between those two services makes very little sense. As for the other services, those under the Google brand, it makes more sense. It's the attempt to push Google+ on me that I dislike.

> Having a single signon between those two services makes very little sense. Where do you draw the line? GMail, Calendar, Drive, Contacts, YouTube, Google+, Android, Chrome, Voice, Hangouts? Should they all have different sign-ons? Is Google forbidden from integrating signons for all future companies it acquires?

Google has always integrated sign-ons between those services.

It is the unification of user profiles that is causing all the uproar.

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#93

Post by login1234 »

VikingCoder wrote: post #88
mrweasel wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that most users understand that Youtube and Google are the same company. Having a single signon between those two services makes very little sense. As for the other services, those under the Google brand, it makes more sense. It's the attempt to push Google+ on me that I dislike.

> Having a single signon between those two services makes very little sense. Where do you draw the line? GMail, Calendar, Drive, Contacts, YouTube, Google+, Android, Chrome, Voice, Hangouts? Should they all have different sign-ons? Is Google forbidden from integrating signons for all future companies it acquires?

> Is Google forbidden from integrating signons for all future companies it acquires?

Forbidden, yes; held hostage by their users for all the free platforms they provide in exchange for all the theoretical dollars they generate in page views

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#94

Post by VikingCoder »

v13inc wrote: post #91
VikingCoder wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word "I" showed up in both of those sentences. To most users, unifying all of their data adds a lot of value. Google reads my GMails from major airlines, and shows me when my next flight is when I Google Search for "when is my next flight". The flight also just pops up on Google Now on my Android phone. It also knows where I am, and where the airport is, so it tells me how long it will take to drive there. When I…

The funny thing is that all those features work right now, without unifying your Google accounts.

I trust Google to come up with clever integrations in the future. The OP does not. I think it's his loss.

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#95

Post by jsz0 »

The Google+ push is annoying but expected. Somewhat off topic but I really wish Google would normalize the volume of ads/videos. These days I tend to get super loud ads then often a quiet video so I'm constantly adjusting my audio levels. Same problem with audio levels between videos but I can accept that's a bit harder to get right. The loud ads though IMO are unacceptable.

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#96

Post by kevingadd »

jevinskie wrote: post #74
kevingadd wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tricking/coercing users into broadcasting their real name to the internet (through repetition, malicious UX design and just plain broken software) is actually pretty close to 'evil', since it can put some groups at risk. Less relevant for a Youtube account, perhaps, but the same criticisms of FB and G+ 'Real Names' policies apply here to Google trying to force YT users to display real names.

Exactly. They pester you quite often to try to link YouTube with Google+. I'm surprised I haven't accidentally clicked the wrong choice yet. The copy for the two options is confusing!

They've changed them/moved them a few times, too. Presumably in the hopes that you'll screw up.

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#97

Post by VikingCoder »

v13inc wrote: post #92
VikingCoder wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having a single signon between those two services makes very little sense. Where do you draw the line? GMail, Calendar, Drive, Contacts, YouTube, Google+, Android, Chrome, Voice, Hangouts? Should they all have different sign-ons? Is Google forbidden from integrating signons for all future companies it acquires?

Google has always integrated sign-ons between those services. It is the unification of user profiles that is causing all the uproar.

You have a very short memory. Google has NOT always integrated sign-ons between those services, and there was an uproar when it happened.

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#98

Post by rogerchucker »

I have issues with people who whine about this G+ integration but are absolutely happy with services that require Facebook account or with the iCloud unification of Apple products. I just hope the author isn't one of them.

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#99

Post by matador »

If anybody working for YouTube is reading this, here are my comments:

I was actually supportive of G+ until I had a very bad experience with YouTube and the forced G+ integration recently. Now what I want from YouTube is

(1) Ability to keep my current username and not use my real name, and not be linked to my G+ profile. I do not want to inadvertently broadcast my YouTube "Likes" to my social network.

(2) I do not want a public channel (not even something like youtube.com/user/) but I want to create private playlists for myself (which is currently not possible without a public channel). The reason I do not want a public channel is because I have no doubt at some point YouTube will manage to "reset" my privacy preferences and expose all my likes, comments etc. to the world through my publicly accessible channel page. And since my YouTube username is just my FirstnameLastname, anybody who googles my name will find all my YouTube activity history.

So till recently whenever YouTube would pop up its dialog boxes insisting I link my channel or use my real name etc., I would always try to choose the option that was closest to what I wanted (as described above). However these dialog box options gave little to no hint as to what are the hidden consequences of choosing one option or the other, and long story short, I managed to somehow end up, first with a public facing channel (yt.com/user/), and then when I tried to get rid of it/make it private because of above mentioned privacy concerns, I ended up losing access to all my playlists INCLUDING my Favorites and Watch Later default playlists.

Now of course that was probably a result of what I unknowingly did, but at no point did YouTube warn me that I would lose my playlists and favorites (YouTube never gave me the slightest hint that private channels cannot have playlists, I had to google it out later from the product forums). I have been a user of a lot of badly designed websites, but no website so far has ever allowed me to delete all of my data without a warning of some sort. Anyway, I got very scared at what YouTube and G+ had done to my account, so I quickly unlinked G+ from YouTube and deleted my G+ profile (I didn't want to end up losing my data in Gmail too).

Thankfully, after I contacted YouTube customer support, they got back to me pretty soon and restored my old YouTube account, somehow I had managed to delete it and create a new one in its place with my real name (hmm I wonder how), and I got back access to my playlists. However the incident has shaken my confidence a lot in Google and its services. I have now started backing up all my data in Gmail to my laptop using Thunderbird. Since YouTube support restored my account to what it originally was, I still keep getting those YouTube dialog boxes asking me to use my real name etc., on average once every other video I try to watch. Now I just refresh the page or watch in incognito mode if it won't go away, hopefully someday YouTube will realize I am not interested and stop annoying me.

To be honest I am nowadays actually really scared to mess around with the account settings of Gmail or other Google services. I remember that whole Google Plus real name policy and en-masse accounts deletion fiasco. I actually have two Google accounts, both made a long time back, both with my real name and I am sure this violates some TOS of Google, and I am genuinely worried that one day Google will suddenly just suspend/delete my accounts without warning because of this.

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#100

Post by csmatt »

darklajid wrote: post #82
fluidcruft wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your phone is supported, you could install CyanogenMod (it works fine without gapps installed). From there you can use f-droid for apps, but possibly Amazon App Store could be a good alternative to the Google Play morass.

I'm running Cyanogenmod, but I like to have (potentially paid) applications (to avoid the 'apps' non-word). I paid for quite a lot already. I'm never allowed to rate them, to comment on them in the Google Play store, since .. I cannot have a G+ account (and frankly, I don't want one).

I run CM too. I killed my G+ account when I found it difficult to change my privacy settings. Not being able to rate apps pissed me off.
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