Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?

news.ycombinator.com

71–80 of 282 posts

Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?

#71
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes thought leaders need to light the way when issues are not apparent to the masses. I have been saying for a long time that having companies own our identities is a bad idea.

What evidence is there that HN commenters are actually "thought leaders"? That sounds like just the sort of hubris the 4chan thread makes fun of.

Writing us off as "geeks" is absurd. A lot of us are high level developers, architects, consultants, and so on.

Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?

#72
Ever since Google has been integrating all their services to Google+, I have been using Google differently now:

1) Anonymous or no commenting on YouTube 2) Using Windows 8.1 Mail app to access Gmail. Because seeing that Google+ notification icon is distracting and annoying me 3) Stopped rating apps on Google Play store 4) Stopped contributing reviews to Local 5) Trying to stop using Google's Web products in favor of apps instead because of that damn Notifications bar.

I understand using a single Google Account for all services, but linking them all to one service where that service acts as a Social Network is not a service I would want to use anymore. They acquired Meeboo bar, and it seems they want every service they own have that bar and I despised that bar. Totally the wrong direction to take.

Treating each service separately would have been better and giving the option to the user to show that bar would have been great.

Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?

#73

I have no idea what the official party line is... but doesn't it make at least a little bit of sense to unify two social networks owned by the same company? One thought about real names: what does your contacts database look like on your phone? While I know a lot of people by their online handles, I also know their real name, and I typically choose to enter that real name into my phone. Maybe this is uncommon, but if…

>> While I know a lot of people by their online handles, I also know their real name, This can't possibly be true. I easily interact with 100+ people on various platforms. I don't know any of their names. I consider them "friends" in a way, but their real names are wholly irrelevant to me. >> if you're talking to your friends via YouTube No... You are having a discussion about the video. This is certainly not your fr…

>> This can't possibly be true.

I would not be so sure. I know at least the first name of most of the people I communicate with exclusively over the internet. Easily over 50 people. Regarding real names being wholly irrelevant, it is true you can get by without knowing somebody's name, but I find that people respond more easily and you can have a more honest, personal conversation if you at least exchange first names.

>> No...

Now maybe I'm a minority here, but most of the things on YouTube I find worthy of a comment have either been uploaded by a friend or commented on by a friend. If I am using it for communication, I'm very likely not wasting my time calling out a random stranger because of their opinion of some random video or adding mine to the mix of comment spam.

Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?

#74
post #70

Internally, G+ is marketed as a unified login/account system. Management's stated reasoning goes something like: * It's silly to force users to have separate accounts for Google services because most users would prefer to have Gmail, Docs/Drive, YouTube, Calendar, and so on under the same account/identity. * Users who want to have separate public identities will create pseudonymous "Pages" for each of their identitie…

Doesn't the pseudonym policy still require your pseudonym's "brand" to be previously established (as arbitrated by Google) in order to create a "Page"? Because that's kind of completely terrible for being the only way to separate identities. Also, in theory I'm not opposed to a unified login (nor are most of the people complaining I assume.) I've simply lost any faith I had that Google will keep different identities…

Nope, pages don't have to be established at all; that requirement is only for using pseudonyms on a "personal" account. Hence the flood of Adolf Hitler page identities posting on YouTube.

Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know a company has jumped shark when employees start explanations for their behavior with a phrase like "Management's stated reasoning goes something like:"

I believe that many internet flame wars are caused by inaccurate or imprecise statements. It is important to me to indicate the source and quality of information that I post. What would you have written?

It's not that your phrasing is incorrect in any way, it's that the subtext is "Management has no clue about the real world, but this is what they claim. It may not be their real motivations, or true in any way, but the statements we hear are" - a level of distrust in management that requires that sort of disclaimer is a bad sign.

Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?

#76

Internally, G+ is marketed as a unified login/account system. Management's stated reasoning goes something like: * It's silly to force users to have separate accounts for Google services because most users would prefer to have Gmail, Docs/Drive, YouTube, Calendar, and so on under the same account/identity. * Users who want to have separate public identities will create pseudonymous "Pages" for each of their identitie…

I've never heard of "Pages" in the context of pseudonyms, only as a way to create Google+ profiles for (small) businesses. It's a bit confusing and ironically a search for it on Google isn't really helpful. How is a "Page" as a separate public identity treated differently compared to a pseudonym? How reliable is it to protect your real identity?

Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> While I know a lot of people by their online handles, I also know their real name, This can't possibly be true. I easily interact with 100+ people on various platforms. I don't know any of their names. I consider them "friends" in a way, but their real names are wholly irrelevant to me. >> if you're talking to your friends via YouTube No... You are having a discussion about the video. This is certainly not your fr…

>> This can't possibly be true. I would not be so sure. I know at least the first name of most of the people I communicate with exclusively over the internet. Easily over 50 people. Regarding real names being wholly irrelevant, it is true you can get by without knowing somebody's name, but I find that people respond more easily and you can have a more honest, personal conversation if you at least exchange first names…

I'm guessing you know my first name along most every person here on Hacker News? Color me skeptical. I consider my interactions here semi-personal. The interactions I have in other places are quite personal. There is a gift of anonymity, and that gift is the allowance to be a only a small part of your real person for a few fleeting moments.

There are many honest reasons I don't want my real name associated with everything I do. Sure, I have my real name posted in various places, but that is because it is my personal and strategic choice, not a point of coercion from a company. Choice is very important to me.

Just imagine this: suppose you wanted to blog about something that could possibly be embarrassing or things that you aren't even talking to your wife, parents, or best friends about. I'm not talking about murder or anything, but things about yourself that are deeply personal and you have nowhere to turn to vent or get advice. The fact is that you are not willing to be vulnerable to people in your real life, but you'd like an outlet and opinions from others about your situation. Believe me, I've posted things in forums and other places about myself that are deeply embarrassing and disturbing. I don't want my next girlfriend to know and I certainly don't want my next employer to know about this stuff.

There is a certain class of people that don't want their entire lives spread across the internet. Heck, I'd venture to guess that your email is not jason@_____.com, and if by some early-adapting miracle it is, most people you interact with is not.

Suppose you wanted to create a G+ account to talk about your frustrations with anything. Would you be willing to be honest and forthcoming if you had to use your real name? Would it be at all entertaining or useful to other people going through the same things you are?

Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Hasn't G+ always showed profile pics next to comments? I don't understand why that would suddenly become a problem just because it's now enabled on YT too. It only makes stalking easier in the sense that there's a greater volume of comments to stalk.

The point is that it makes stalking much more efficient and there's no way to protect oneself from it on YouTube without changing the profile pic. The current #1 submission on HN is from a woman slamming google for this problem [1]. On the YouTube side the poster of the current top comment on the Miley Cyrus video is getting hostile replies based on the profile pic being of a very young girl. [1] https://plus.google.…

If you read the comments on that post or the HN thread you would see that you can link your YT identity to a G+ "page", where you can set the name and profile pic to whatever you want. It sounds like your real issue is with the fact they haven't made this more widely known, or part of the conversion flow. Your original complaint still makes no sense to me and just reads like more of the same knee/circle-jerk reaction.

Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?

#79

I have no idea what the official party line is... but doesn't it make at least a little bit of sense to unify two social networks owned by the same company? One thought about real names: what does your contacts database look like on your phone? While I know a lot of people by their online handles, I also know their real name, and I typically choose to enter that real name into my phone. Maybe this is uncommon, but if…

But YouTube isn't really a social network. It's more often a video search engine. I don't want my search history on public display, attached to my real name. If I like a video, I don't want that to be visible if someone Googles my name.

Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?

#80

Don't forget that one of the tacit reasons for G+'s existence is simply to have a reason to encourage G+ buttons on each page for further tracking of what's happening on the internet. Using a single identity helps to reconcile a unique user that help both the advertiser reach "uniques" and for Google to better understand that user's behavior. Back to the point: Google's ethos is to track and analyze as much of what's…

From https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1319578 : > The +1 button isn’t used to track your visits across the web. > Google doesn’t keep a persistent record of your browsing > history as part of the process of showing you a +1 button or > otherwise use the fact that you personally have visited a page > with the +1 button.

Okay, so the mere _presence_ of the +1 button in a browser doesn't track visits across the web. But when you press the button, "Google receives information about your Google profile, the URL you +1, your IP address, and other browser-related information."
Post reply on HN