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Nonplussed

techcrunch.com

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Re: Nonplussed

#51

Post by jlgreco »

scholia wrote: post #11
seiji wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we reconcile Google Only Hires Geniuses with their executional incompetence across multiple (dozens of?) products? Is it a pride of ego fallacy? They think they are the best and they can do no wrong, so they just keep doing things without thinking results through? Too many logical programmers trying to have input on end users/UI/UX decisions where visuals and emotions are more important? Too many 24 year old b…

I agree with the sentiments, but most Google products worked better when they were done by logical programmers. They've all got much less usable since the fancy UI designers came in and screwed them up.

> They've all got much less usable since the fancy UI designers came in and screwed them up.

See also, the decline of GNOME. This isn't a problem unique to Google.

Re: Nonplussed

#52

Post by BadassFractal »

I've been trying to figure out how to delete Google+ for a while, without accidentally nuking some of the other services such as Picasa etc. Heard of folks losing a bunch of data (Youtube videos?) when they remove their G+ accounts, so that's a huge bummer.

Perhaps it's time to move on from Google Photos, flickr maybe? I don't want another social network.

Re: Nonplussed

#53

Post by joosters »

venomsnake wrote: post #40

Google has really lost its way to do UX. Google plus and youtube are not the one ones. I have no permanent way to disable Youtube asking me to merge accounts except goat sacrifice and writing directly to Larry Page - "If I rejected you 25 time why do you think I will agree on the 26th" I had to use Google Maps yesterday - the mobile app. Few things of notice - scale was never given on screen. Also there was not a way…

The missing scale on Google maps is infuriating, IMO. How can you use the app to navigate around city streets if you can't easily see the distances involved?

(N.b. this is on iOS, I think Android maps has a scale?)

Re: Nonplussed

#54

Post by acjohnson55 »

spodek wrote: post #19

Experiences like this led me to leave Facebook, then LinkedIn, a while ago. I haven't deleted my Google+ account only because laziness and fear of an experience like the article's author prevent me from going to the site. People describe leaving as trendy, as if leaving had something to do with other people as opposed to the sites' own repellent behavior. For me leaving was easy and fun -- http://joshuaspodek.com/lea…

I'm really psyched about Tent (https://tent.io/) as an alternative model. If people start to build apps around it, the promise is a system that puts storage and sharing into the hands of the user, not the provider.

Re: Nonplussed

#55

Post by scholia »

spullara wrote: post #49
turing wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scenario you describe is precisely why I like G+'s circles; every post and every photo shared is shared with a specific subset of my contacts. The vast majority of my posts on G+ are targeted at only a fraction of my friends.

Facebook had this functionality for years before G+ launched and is built into the status update box.

Plus you can have closed user groups on Facebook. They work well....

Re: Nonplussed

#56

Post by msthomaa »

venomsnake wrote: post #40

Google has really lost its way to do UX. Google plus and youtube are not the one ones. I have no permanent way to disable Youtube asking me to merge accounts except goat sacrifice and writing directly to Larry Page - "If I rejected you 25 time why do you think I will agree on the 26th" I had to use Google Maps yesterday - the mobile app. Few things of notice - scale was never given on screen. Also there was not a way…

About blocking the Youtube notification for account merge: add this custom filter in Adblock ||s.ytimg.com/yts/jsbin/www-linkgplusdialog* and it stops the pop-ups. Someone posted this a while back on Reddit, and it actually works really well.

Re: Nonplussed

#57

Post by devindotcom »

Hey all. I'm the author. I don't really have much to add here except that I was afraid the article, which I dashed off as all that stuff was happening, would come off as whiny. Hope that isn't the case. Thanks for reading and linking.

Re: Nonplussed

#58

Post by Bahamut »

scholia wrote: post #50
joelrunyon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've seen what FB comments does on news sites - then you know that using real names doesn't really guarantee improved quality.

For many years, I was a paying subscriber to the online version of the Wall Street Journal. A highly select audience, you'd think. And yes, the comments on that were mostly rubbish as well ;-)

To be fair, it is the Wall Street Journal :P .

Using real names does not fix the problem completely, I agree - you easily see the effect on articles on politics on news sites, with the mass shill accounts.

However, I argue that it is a lot greater of a deterrent.

Re: Nonplussed

#59

Post by enraged_camel »

metalgearbob wrote: post #26
chimeracoder wrote: post #2

I wonder how much engagement Google/Facebook/et. al. lose from people who are about to make a comment/post a status/etc., and then thing 'Hm, no - this is private now, but what about in a year when they automatically change my privacy settings without asking me?' Put another way, imagine I am a teenager or college student who uses Facebook. 1. Start to upload a photo from my phone of me and my friends doing shots 2.…

I am a 22 year old kid and I can't tell you how many times this has happened to me. It even happens with snap chats actually, because of the apps that allow you to save a snap. I am noticing however that there seems to be a strong correlation between household income and internet behavior. My wealthier friends all have pristine online images, while the poorer ones tend to share more.

I'm pretty sure Snapchat notifies you if the other party takes a screenshot of your photo, though.

Re: Nonplussed

#60

Post by emn13 »

rhizome wrote: post #38
chimeracoder wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you remember what happened and think that G+ has had a hand in the leakage, please feel free to ping me (my URL is in my profile) and I'll try to follow it up Thanks for the offer - I really appreciate it. I think it had something to do with group contacts in Gmail, but I can't remember. If I have some time today I might take a look. To clarify: I'm not exactly mad at Google in this case, because I'm a developer…

It sounds like it was a failure of design.

Then perhaps they shouldn't have taken the design into use until it was... usable. And it's really more than merely design in any case, it's at least a pretty core piece of underlying philosophy - connect everything to G+.

It's one thing to do this if you're a new service, with users that don't have all kinds of baggage with you - if your UI isn't great they can choose to accept it for the value you offer or reject it. But existing users it's almost a kind of fraud - you convince em to join under a false pretense but then change the rules half way.

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