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Dear Googles: Stop asking

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Re: Dear Googles: Stop asking

#131

Post by Silhouette »

weland wrote: post #75
simias wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just silly, Google can't afford to alienate its users, whether you consider them customers or products. This phrase is becoming a meme.

Yes, it can. Where exactly are they going to go? Even the really few of us who care about it enough to stop using Google search , turning to duckduckgo, still need to go back to Google every once in a while, when DDG obviously doesn't cut it. The interwebs are filled with Google's advertising products, and the number of Gmail users who evangelically try to beat its interface into behaving well enough to be worth a fu…

We are still a good five or six years away from the point where Google would have to worry about alienating the users whose data they sell

I imagine MySpace were saying something similar for a couple of years as Facebook started really taking off, and Yahoo probably thought no new search engines were a threat a year or two before Google arrived.

The Internet is a funny place. A lot of Internet users move in herds, which means a disruptive newcomer can grow very fast if the whole viral networking effect kicks in, but usually when that happens one or more established players must fall to create the space.

Re: Dear Googles: Stop asking

#132

Post by msabalau »

zaraflan wrote: post #51
buro9 wrote: post #34

Does Google believe that if they just push a little harder and finish the job, that somehow the people so alienated will be won over? Or is the pursuit of profit far more important than the perception of the brand overall? Right now, and for the last year, the brand is being severely tarnished in all of the networks I have, tech and real-life. I don't see them winning on any front. A Pyrrhic victory.

Never forget that you are not the customer, you are the product.

There is nothing magical about being the customer. Paying money doesn't stop anyone from creating a multi sided market that makes you the product. As anyone who subscribed to a magazine, purchased season tickets to a cultural organization, or seen an ad on an Xbox can attest.

Also, you created an account an hour after this article was posted just to type a banal cliche that we've all had to endure endlessly?

Re: Dear Googles: Stop asking

#133

Post by shittyanalogy »

rjd wrote: post #25
shittyanalogy wrote: post #14

The whole phone number thing is an attempt to solve a very hard problem. Most people have terrrrrrrrrrrible password practices. Absolutely abysmal. And they are keeping extremely sensitive data inside their email as well as using their email address as the key to accessing many other websites and pieces of sensitive data. Think about how screwed you'd be if you lost access to you email address. Now think of how many…

You totally miss the point. Its not about how great two factor authentication is. Its about the fact I don't want to use the two factor authentication, I'd rather loose everything. I'd rather have my "sensitive" data compromised than have some multinational advertising company that has been compromised by every major government on the planet have access to me at any given time. And its as annoying as having someone s…

Cool then continue to click "no". Your personal preferences have nothing to do with google's intention.

If someone steals your phone and it's logged into all your personal accounts and you don't contact your mobile provider to shut the sim-card off then yes you are screwed. Also I would suggest cancelling your credit cards if someone steals your wallet.

Re: Dear Googles: Stop asking

#134

Post by gesman »

1. Google asking me for cellphone number only because I've enabled 2-factor authentication so it does it for every new browser/device.

2. Regarding chats, I think it's in cookies, so when you change browsers - the whole QA thing repeats.

3. Google of course wants to know about you more than your mama and spouse combined, but at least some of that pestering experience is due to the fact that Google is prone to employing lousy programmers as much as any other corp.

4. No one is forced to use Google's free services and be put up with begging for personal information so that implies the freedom to switch to any other provider away from Google.

Re: Dear Googles: Stop asking

#135

Post by leoc »

Silhouette wrote: post #123
leoc wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By all accounts the consolidation and Plusification of Google's services is being driven from the top, by Larry Page specifically.

That a bad plan comes from a famous person doesn't make it any less of a bad plan. In the spirit of Google: +1 for people and +2 for companies now actively moving away from almost all Google properties because they're becoming so unpleasant and/or unproductive to use. I know they're all about being data driven and running empirical tests: that's why the {expletive deleted} page moves around every time I come back and…

> That a bad plan comes from a famous person doesn't make it any less of a bad plan.

But I didn't say that the plan was a good one (or a bad one), just that this action and similar ones do seem to be in accord with that top-down plan rather than the result of independent action by lower-level people.

Re: Dear Googles: Stop asking

#137

Post by n09n »

leoc wrote: post #115
n09n wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe as a general assessment, but I think the google+/youtube merger specifically is being driven by ideology, not metrics. Remember that memo Steve Yegge wrote a few years ago? I think the company took that message very seriously. Maybe a little too seriously...

I don't see the connection though. Yegge was lamenting Google's unwillingness to be serious about being a platform company for third-party app developers (, developers, developers, developers ...) The latest changes don't seem to have much to do with progress on that front.

I didn't say they understood it correctly. The way I see it is that they read it and decided to act on it by making Google+ their core platform and giving it the killer app that it had been lacking - youtube. Opening up their platform for others might come later. Or maybe they forgot about it. Who knows?

Re: Dear Googles: Stop asking

#139

Post by sitharus »

pessimizer wrote: post #130
davidgerard wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're wrong there. I remember using the web back then. Search sucked before Google. Altavista was a bit better than what came before it, but Google really was the first search engine that was any bloody good at all . The PageRank algorithm basically cracked the search problem. Making money actually came years later. Google used the method of "get a zillion users and we'll figure out money later."

>Google really was the first search engine that was any bloody good at all. This is not even vaguely true. Google's algorithm was a bit better, their page was cleaner, and they weren't trying to push you into other services or wall you into any weirdness. If google had pulled the shit they pull now back then, I never would have switched to it. I switched to google because they convinced me that their simple, honest s…

The algorithm was better, but it wasn't revolutionary. The main point was it specifically ignored the page titles and meta tags that got all the keyword stuffing at the time.

The biggest advantage Google had was their listings were all search results, whereas most competitors had paid listings included in the results, but at the top of course.

Re: Dear Googles: Stop asking

#140

Post by MichaelGG »

kordless wrote: post #50
alextingle wrote: post #10

I was all enthusiastic about G+ for about 5 minutes - until they wouldn't allow my wife to sign up without giving them her phone number, and proving that it was hers by accepting a call from them . Just who the fuck do they think they are?? There is no way I could suggest my friends and family sign up to such an intrusive service, so I quickly deleted my own account. It's an absolutely stunning achievement to create…

> Just who the fuck do they think they are?? They think they are Google - you know, the guys that made the Internet searchable. I'm pretty sure they know what they are doing. Call verification is used by many services to establish ownership of an account, and to provide a fallback mechanism that automates the recovery of an account. Google likes to automate the shit out of things. This is no different. I hear that yo…

Call verification alone is pretty vulnerable. For a social network login, it might be OK. For access to all your information (which is what Google is heading towards, and is already for some people) it's not great. If someone steals your phone number, it's game over. (AFAIK if you verify via phone you can bypass 2FA, right?)
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