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

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

#81

Post by bigiain »

jaggederest wrote: post #75
jmillikin wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Its hardly "subtext", when the last sentence is "I don't believe Google+ management is malicious, but they do seem woefully unaware of how internet-native communities behave."

(I must admit I did shake my head at that and think "even at _Google_?")

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

#82

Post by JasonSage »

dizzystar wrote: post #77
JasonSage wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 every…

By most of the people, I mean almost the entirety of my contacts that I talk with via IM, email, or Steam, and excluding the 5 or so people I've responded to on HN.

And regarding wanting to blog about something that could possibly be embarrassing . . . well, I am very open about things. Why should I be ashamed of my opinion or a particular circumstance? I think there is no reason to be ashamed unless it is directly my fault, least of all my opinion. If it is something I have done wrong, I should own up to it or talk about what I have learned. Sickness, addiction, emotions, opinions . . . these are all things I should be able to talk about or proud of, not things I need to hide behind a username to open up about.

I realize this is probably not indicative of how the majority of people feel in this situation.

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

#83

Post by bigiain »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #68
jmduke wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly wasn't trying to be condescending, and apologize if it came off that way. (I'll leave the original post unedited so it doesn't look like you're crazy or anything.) That being said, Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users? is an incredibly loaded question and I think my tone might have stemmed from that.

>That being said, Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users? is an incredibly loaded question and I think my tone might have stemmed from that. It doesn't seem very loaded to me. The implication is simply that G+ is bad. Nothing more. That's a reasonable implication for someone to make. It's not a 'have you stopped beating your wife' type of question.

Or the other obvious interpretation is - they place pretty much zero value on their users (or perhaps even a negative value on those whiny privacy conscious tech-crowd users that hang out on commie un-monetized sites like HN…).

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

#84

Post by jmillikin »

yabatopia wrote: post #76
jmillikin wrote: post #30

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?

  > How is a "Page" as a separate public identity treated
  > differently compared to a pseudonym?
If I remember correctly there's some anti-spam restrictions on interaction with people not in your circles, but that was a few months ago and they may have been lifted. The current documentation[1][2] doesn't mention any restrictions.

[1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2848323

[2] https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1710600

  > How reliable is it to protect your real identity?
There's no public link between identities, so most pseudonymous use cases are met by Pages. Users with unusual privacy needs will still need to be careful, as adversaries could perform statistical analysis of text style or activity times to determine if two identities are owned by the same person.

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

#85

Post by gobbluth »

Not a Google employee, just a satisfied member. As far as I can tell, these are the following flaws with G+:

1) It's idiotic that my URL must be FirstnameLastname1234.

2) GDrive storage (which I use to upload 2000px G+ photos) is unfortunately expensive when compared to Everpix's unlimited storage. Everpix would have been quite profitable at G+'s scale, too. If Google invested this much in photo enhancement services, why not allow us to pay $50/year for unlimited full-size photo storage?

3) Not enough participation by other people, though it's getting there.

4) I'll never review a Google Play app or Youtube video if I'm forced to publish everything with my real name. They should allow pseudonyms.

Seriously, are there other problems? It provides fantastic value for me in the form of auto-awesome photos and the eventual integration of Google Voice. My profile is completely locked down to outsiders and unifies my Google services under a single identity.

I just don't see what the problem is. At worst, it discourages participation on the Play Store and Youtube. In exchange, I get cool photo stuff and a pretty great social network. There are still improvements to be made, but I don't understand HN's antagonism. Quite frankly, G+ is welcome competition to Facebook. G+ has better design than Facebook, respects my privacy vastly more than Facebook, and provides incredibly valuable photo backup and enhancement.

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

#86

Post by TheLegace »

amasad wrote: post #37

I'd be more concerned when they start forcing G+ on open platforms like the Web and Android. Maybe it's already started with Android KitKat shipping with Hangouts as the default messaging app.

The worst part is I can't even disable it if I am using my another SMS app, so now I have to clear two notifications for my text message and 50% of the time I usually end up in the Hangouts app where I don't want to be.

When will this madness stop?

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

#88

Post by minwcnt5 »

alayne wrote: post #71
minwcnt5 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So are all of the people who worked on Google+. The notion that anyone here, or any individual at Google, is a thought leader whose own personal use of technology represents where the industry is going just because they're a high level developer seems like narcissism.

I don't think we should be completely written off as "geeks", you're right about that, but it should certainly be acknowledged that we're a small (heavily) biased sample of the general population and our preferences need to be taken with a grain of salt.

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

#89

Post by JamesNelson »

alayne wrote: post #71
minwcnt5 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> A lot of us are high level developers, architects, consultants, and so on.

Which in the eyes of most people other than those you have listed, makes us geeks. If we're talking about leadership, it isn't so much how we see ourselves that matters, but how others see us.

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

#90

Post by bandushrew »

minwcnt5 wrote: post #78
mcphilip wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have seen this banded around a bit, and it really isn't a solution. I 'firewall' different social networks, my YT access and my Google+ access are usually performed in 2 very different contexts and I have no interest in people or personalities leaking from one to the other.

Now, you are offering a pseudo anonymous solution, but that is an insufficient firewall for my needs.

Maintaining privacy across multiple networks, some of which contain my personal life, some my work life, some my social life and some my internet life is hard.

There is simply no freaking way I am going to trust a company which cares a LOT less than I do about my privacy be responsible for maintaining it.

BUT luckily this whole thing really doesn't affect me directly, my firewalls have not actually been affected.

I was just hoping to communicate why the suggestion you are making is not actually an effective solution for anyone who cares about their privacy.

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