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We Need To Talk, Google

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Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#151

Post by tl »

endgame wrote: post #147
300bps wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I switched to HTML5 video for youtube because I don't have flash on this machine. Initially I couldn't watch about 30% of videos because "flash player is required". Now it's closer to 90% - either because "flash player is required" or "this video is unavailable" - and yet the youtube-dl script still works. Stop lying to me, Google!

As an additional insult, when an item in my RSS feed is a YouTube video, I can play it in Feedly in a (flashless) Safari. However, if I go to the youtube page (the embedded version in Feedly lacks fullscreen, for example), "flash player is required." Who is youtube's most viable competitor? Vimeo? Is there anything consumers can do to encourage content to be posted there instead?

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#152

Post by jessedhillon »

VikingCoder wrote: post #116
chmars wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1/2 OT: Navigating to La Cucaracha, i.e., literally to The Cockroach? Is there really a place called La Cucaracha? I would have expected Google to show ads for exterminator services or maybe a link to a YouTube video featuring the La Cucaracha song … ;)

I've been to a great Mexican restaurant named La Cucaracha. Great name, huh? I've always wondered how Chi-Chi's stayed in business, BTW.

Because who wants to go to a place called tits? Me, that's who.

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#153

Post by bambax »

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…

> I find value in these things

Well then good for you, and you should be able to merge all your accounts with Google into one; but why should this be almost compulsory?

What's more, if there's so much value into this, why does Google have to force its users to do it?

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#154

Post by habosa »

lazyjones wrote: post #140
lawdawg wrote: post #10

Get over it people, Google+ is the new account system for all Google products. If you don't like Google having a single account/profile system, or the fact that Google+ profiles include a "social" network product, then you best look for alternatives ASAP.

> Get over it people, Google+ is the new account system for all Google products. Maybe Google should finally get over the fact that they've lost this fight and that noone wants to be in a social network whose member numbers are inflated by such desperate moves (which most of us have experienced now and are well aware of).

If you follow Google's strategy, you'll see that they really are not interested in the "stream-view war" with Facebook that everyone seems so intent on their playing. Instead, Google+ is a social backbone that connects all Google products (present and future) and gives you a single Google identity across the internet.

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#155

Post by [deleted] »

lazyjones wrote: post #136
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…

> Google is simply trying to unify their services That's silly. If they wanted to unify their services, they'd turn youtube channels into G+ profiles. And they'd do it without any hassle for the users. I'm sorry, but it's obvious that Google is desperately trying to inflate their G+ profile numbers by any means they can devise, because they won't admit to themselves that they've already lost the social network battle…

[deleted]

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#156

Post by [deleted] »

lazyjones wrote: post #136
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…

> Google is simply trying to unify their services That's silly. If they wanted to unify their services, they'd turn youtube channels into G+ profiles. And they'd do it without any hassle for the users. I'm sorry, but it's obvious that Google is desperately trying to inflate their G+ profile numbers by any means they can devise, because they won't admit to themselves that they've already lost the social network battle…

[deleted]

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#157

Post by yuhong »

zanny wrote: post #37
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…

Old google made cool things and make their money off ads and search ranking. New google only cares about beating facebook because they came onto the scene and took over the front page of everyones Internet role. I don't even think it has anything to do with bottom lines, either. I can't understand how knowing who spams my G+ page with crap who I friended for an arbitrary reason is more valuable information in how to…

On this matter, there is this blog post:

http://piaw.blogspot.ca/2010/05/organizational-thinking.html

I wonder how and why Vic Gundotra was chosen.

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#158

Post by nitrogen »

scholia wrote: post #128
calinet6 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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....

I exaggerate, but only slightly....

If anything, you're understating the frustration of the new GMail compose UI. My browser window hasn't gotten any smaller, but the amount of important information displayed at any given time by GMail continues to decrease.

"Oh, you don't really need to see who you're sending this e-mail to, nor could you possibly care whether they're a To:, CC:, or BCC:, so we'll just hide them all behind a single line."

"While we're at it, we'll make you use your mouse to see what formatting and linking options are available. Never mind that they're always in the same place, we just feel like hiding them from you, you know, to watch your mouse squirm!"

"As an added bonus, we'll move the cursor back to the top of your composed text when our silly algorithm decides to unhide the quoted text! For free!"

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#159

Post by nitrogen »

cbhl wrote: post #66
nolok wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why force me (if I link) to change the name I appear as on youtube to be the real one they required for g+ ? I can't believe I'm the only one with things I posted as FooBar42 that I don't want under the name Mr John Smith, not in an age where your name is googled for about anything.

The argument is that if you didn't want them posted under "Mr John Smith" you shouldn't have posted them at all. I think they let you delete/hide all your old comments as part of the transition, but agreed that only accounts for the personal account use case, not the corporate YouTube channel use case.

It's problematic that telecoms get retroactive immunity for their revelations of personal information, but ordinary people get retroactive punishment when their previously pseudonymous information becomes personalized.

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#160

Post by mbell »

bambax wrote: post #153
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…

> I find value in these things Well then good for you, and you should be able to merge all your accounts with Google into one; but why should this be almost compulsory? What's more, if there's so much value into this, why does Google have to force its users to do it?

> Well then good for you, and you should be able to merge all your accounts with Google into one; but why should this be almost compulsory?

Quite often here on Hacker News we sit around and talk about how removing features or options from an App is often the best thing to do for usability. I think this is true. At the same time every time this comes up with regards to Google or some other large company the response flips around completely.

Ultimately I think the readership here is just the 10% of users that want the option, exactly the group we often say that should be ignored for the overall good of the product.

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