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We Need To Talk, Google

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Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#121

Post by pasbesoin »

tiziano88 wrote: post #75
pasbesoin wrote: post #65

If your product isn't good enough to succeed (or "win") on an opt-in basis, then your problems run deeper than what coercive sign ups can fix.

What product? they're trying to consolidate their login system across products, and you happen to get a social profile with the bundle. It's not like you even have to use it or be aware of its existence, if you don't need it.

The Google+ "social" product. I'm not sure of its current state, as everything is a moving target, but at the time I acquired one, the creation flow was deliberately somewhat misleading, for example not pointing out that you don't need to supply a profile photo. And/or there was one question that required a response; some googling (irony?) revealed that one could remove the answer or its public visibility after signing up.

And this was after much of the initial foofera (sp?), that had already caused Google to scale back some of its demands for/during the sign up flow, IIRC.

Plus had/has a lot going for it. Then, they tried to cram it (and "true names", etc.) down our throat.

Opt-in. Carrot first, not stick.

--

P.S. Let me put it this way: I want the ability to choose for myself and entirely what aspects of a "Google profile" I make public.

Separately, I'll also add that as Google has gobbled up more and more popular products, I've become increasingly leery of a single profile that tracks and analyzes me across all of them and their varied and diverse functionality.

I'm not doing anything particularly nefarious. But when the price Amazon charges me depends on a profile, and my insurance rate or ability to get insurance may depend on another profile and "social graph", etc., etc... And also on principle and for some sense of privacy and peace of mind (however incomplete)...

Monocultures are subject to disease and corruption. One analogy that I might extent to online cultures. I don't want all my eggs in one basket -- especially when it's not even by my choice.

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#122

Post by johnward »

300bps wrote: post #30
noir_lord wrote: post #27

Google used to be the wunderkind, I remember when absolutely everything they touched was gold...and now they seem to have so much stuff that is broken across so many products. Alot of it is just dumb stuff and the rest is stuff that should have been caught. This is the last week.. Google Apps Admin Interface - It's an unnavigable mess, I use it so seldom that it's not familiarity or the lack of that makes me hate the…

Not to mention YouTube is all but unusable now. I understand that this may be local ISPs trying to kill YouTube by throttling it. But all I know is that I have a 75/35 Mbps account from Verizon FIOS and everything else is unbelievably fast but YouTube which hardly ever works anymore during peak times.

You tube is basically real player now. Buffering...

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#123

Post by andor »

quail wrote: post #80
MichaelGG wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately Android's still the only really reasonable choice. Apple and MS are far more restrictive on the devices, and nothing seems to come close to the Nexus line of devices anyways. It's pretty annoying that I can't rate apps I buy though.

I went with a Blackberry Z10 after reading about its built in encryption and privacy features in the book Cypherpunks. As an aside, I checked out the new Q5 yesterday and it has refinements in all the right places. Both are highly underrated smartphones.

There's no reason to trust Blackberry. Even though the new devices can do IMAP directly (not indirectly through the "cloud"), they send your login credentials to RIM.

Details: http://frank.geekheim.de/?p=2379

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#125

Post by johnward »

gavinpc wrote: post #5

You get this popup if you're doing anything on youtube, even just trying watch Baby Mozart. (My son is one.) For viewing, you can just delete the cookies and reload the page. With Reader gone (and forwarding for GMail, which I've also deprecated), I don't stay logged in to google.com anymore. That doesn't work of course if you actually want to use your youtube channel, but hey.

I don't know how many times I can watch a ball bounce or a hand put the round peg into the round hole. I've watched way too much Baby Einstein videos and I don't even have kids (wife just babysits).

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#126

Post by frozenport »

oblio wrote: post #113
frozenport wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want that! I want to remain anonymous to help improve the content of youtube without exposing myself to risk. For example I might want to post something bad about a competitor's youtube video, which will contribute to the discussion but I don't want my affiliation or name to distract from this conversation. The real problem is that the elimination of privacy that Google has so meticulously pursued has left th…

If you're giving Youtube comments as a shining example of quality and stimulating comment, I guess something is totally wrong in this world. Even with the new rating system, the comments on Youtube are the best example of human stupidity.

Its not about stimulation, it about ranking and feedback. Comments like 'This sucks' are also good.

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#127

Post by cromwellian »

stfsbrb wrote: post #56

I'm still convinced that Google's insistence on funneling all activity from their services into Google+ accounts (even in cases where it clearly doesn't make sense) is being done solely so that Google can go back to their shareholders and report a large amount of "growth" in their social platform. They don't seem to have any end game or plan beyond merely pumping up the numbers as high as possible. Maybe they are jus…

Shareholders don't care about G+, Facebook's IPO and returns have already shown them that search advertising is way better and social network ads are not the real threat that was sold.

What Wall Street looks at is search and display ads. Reporting 400 million active G+ users wouldn't do anything, anymore than 700 million GMail users, 750 million Chrome users, Android with 80% of the market. None of those really drive any direct revenue. (GMail does, but not much)

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#128

Post by scholia »

calinet6 wrote: post #70
cromwellian wrote: post #49

Google is simply trying to unify their services. YouTube was an acquisition, with it's own login system and social network. They don't want to maintain this separation forever, they want a single signon for everything. Ditto for sharing and contacts. You had separate 'contacts' in Gmail, Latitude, G+, Reader, YouTube, and probably others I'm missing. Users shouldn't be prompted to maintain N different copies of this…

The problem is that they're not unifying their services well. In UX discussions this always comes up as one that sucks. Basically the Google UX, to me, is "Here's a bunch of stuff that we have. Good luck!" They need to seriously put the unifying UX of their entire brand from end-to-end as their top priority, so that you go to Google and can actually use what they offer in a cohesive way, instead of with piecemeal wal…

Plus, it's very hard to tell if a feature has been _removed_ or just hidden away where you're unlikely to find it.

The core of the Google UI at the moment is: "Hey, move your mouse around the screen or just click somewhere and maybe something useful will slide out from where we've hidden it!"

I exaggerate, but only slightly....

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#129

Post by v13inc »

VikingCoder wrote: post #119
v13inc wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, that's hard to say without doing proper usability testing. I managed to find a decent looking study that somewhat supports my position [1]. Here's an interesting quote from the abstract: "many (40%) were hesitant to consent to the release of their personal profile information; and (6) many (36%) ex- pressed concern with the use of SSO on websites that contain valuable personal information or, conversel…

Many (40%) were hesitant to use Facebook, when it was described to them, citing privacy concerns. And then 98% of them did. How people say they will act, and how they act, are completely different animals.

Hence the need for studies ;)

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#130

Post by snowwrestler »

cromwellian wrote: post #63
ryanhuff wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would be fooling yourself if you think somebody within Google isn't planning for the day that YouTube commenting is merged with G+ social streams. As they look to leverage social signals to improve search, centralizing the user's social footprint will be an important component, and using one of their more prolific social streams (YouTube) to prop-up G+ will be key.

If that day comes, I'll might celebrate, because YouTube comments are mostly worthless, full of sexism, racism, insults, and sheer idiocy. I rarely come across a YouTube comment that imparted useful information. G+ doesn't really need propping up, most of the people I enjoy reading are on it, I get more engagement than I ever did on Twitter or FB with the people I'm interested in (note, not friends, but interests), a…

Google comments are invaluable for one thing--identifying the name of that song in the background.
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