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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?

#101

Post by jayzalowitz »

googlemployee1 wrote: post #6

I work pretty high up at Google, and I (obviously) made this account to post in this thread. Google is effectively "dead" in my opinion, and this mirrors (at least in my experience) the feelings of many of our other higher-ups who are concerned with technology rather than the business. Everything has stagnated, it's no longer fun to work here, and it's entirely about making money now. The claims that we don't bend ov…

I am going to call bullshit here. Your writing doesn't have the nuance id expect, and would know better than to make some of the claims.

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

#102

Post by djillionsmix »

minwcnt5 wrote: post #60
alayne wrote: 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.

oh gosh 4chan talked some shit about us, we better all change our behavior now to meet 4chan's standards

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

#103

Post by sidcool »

googlemployee1 wrote: post #6

I work pretty high up at Google, and I (obviously) made this account to post in this thread. Google is effectively "dead" in my opinion, and this mirrors (at least in my experience) the feelings of many of our other higher-ups who are concerned with technology rather than the business. Everything has stagnated, it's no longer fun to work here, and it's entirely about making money now. The claims that we don't bend ov…

[Not a Google employee] Effectively dead? Their share prices are soaring. Android is killing the competition. Google Glass and Self Driving cars are hep. They have the best talent at their disposal. I am a Google fanboy, so my view might be skewed here, but they indeed are prospering, probably to the dismay of many; but the truth stands.

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

#104

Post by stanleydrew »

dsl wrote: post #92
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…

First of all, thank you for responding publicly. In hindsight what I really meant to ask was this: Why is Google Plus (the social network) worth burning every other Google service and product to the ground in an attempt to drive adoption? Is Google really that scared of Facebook? The fact that this post turned into a YouTube complaint fest highlights the bad decisions being made, but I am more interested in the big p…

I think what OP is saying is that they are arguably not attempting to drive adoption of Google+ the social network, but rather drive adoption of Google+ the single-sign-on system.

The fact that both things are tied so closely together is what's causing all the problems.

Personally it seems like they could have just stuck with the concept of a Google Account, which I think still exists anyway. Use that thing for single-sign-on and let people link GMail, YT, AdWords, G+ accounts to it.

They are essentially attempting to "rebrand" their identity system with G+ at the core. But what we are seeing is that there is major friction and unintended consequences when you attempt this kind of shift and have so many users with tons of different use-cases across different individual identity systems.

I don't envy their position, although I do think this was probably mostly avoidable, or at least a lot of the problems (especially with YT) should have been foreseeable, and so they really only have themselves to blame.

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

#105

Post by morgante »

yuhong wrote: post #3

This article that was submitted to HN had a section on Vic Gundotra that should have clues: http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2013/09/20/sex_a...

Original: http://www.businessinsider.com/sex-and-politics-at-google-it...

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

#106

Post by cdash »

paganel wrote: post #91
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 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 Then it means you're really not communicating that much over the Internet. Just to give you my personal example (and I'm generally an introvert), when it comes to "Internet discussion" I'm more or less actively involved in: a tramspotting forum, /r/soccer, /r/the_name_…

You don't know the usernames of the tens of thousands of people you "communicated" with in those communities either.

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

#108

Post by cdash »

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.

The public at large doesn't really give a shit if some developers, architects, or consultants want to send a message by deleting their google accounts and refusing to use google services.

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

#109

Post by ddebernardy »

sidcool wrote: post #103
googlemployee1 wrote: post #6

I work pretty high up at Google, and I (obviously) made this account to post in this thread. Google is effectively "dead" in my opinion, and this mirrors (at least in my experience) the feelings of many of our other higher-ups who are concerned with technology rather than the business. Everything has stagnated, it's no longer fun to work here, and it's entirely about making money now. The claims that we don't bend ov…

[Not a Google employee] Effectively dead? Their share prices are soaring. Android is killing the competition. Google Glass and Self Driving cars are hep. They have the best talent at their disposal. I am a Google fanboy, so my view might be skewed here, but they indeed are prospering, probably to the dismay of many; but the truth stands.

That means little. Ballmer oversaw very profitable years in Microsoft history. But MS is no less of an undead cash-cow today.

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

#110

Post by aragot »

libovness wrote: post #35

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…

+1 Anyone who has used Google Analytics knows that we can now sort page views by... age. Or gender.
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