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...
HN submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6420546
Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?
111–120 of 282 posts
Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
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."
If you click the button, it lights up in red and also shows up in the +1's tab on your plus.google.com profile (which you can make public or private). Since the +1 button is served from Google's servers and displayed via an iframe, Google of course receives client information when you click it. You're making a request to Google's servers.
It sounds like we're saying the same thing. I just was pointing out that this is all entirely consistent with the entire point of G+ being the "further tracking of what's happening on the internet."
Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?
#113Internally, 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…
It's silly to force users to have separate accounts for Google services. I don't understand how this wasn't the case before Google+. I've had my Google account for years and it always worked on all the Google services I've seen. I've never had to use a separate account for anything.
Either you were very late to the party, or you have a very short memory.
Most people didn't have a "Google account". They had a GMail account. If they had Blogger or YouTube accounts, they usually had them before Gmail.
It was bad enough when Google started shoving those accounts into one and tacking services on people didn't ask for without politely asking them to sign-up. But now they are forcing people into an entirely new service that has the explicit purpose to expose them and to annihilate their privacy.
I wouldn't mind the principle of one single account for all Google services in principle, if a) I can have multiple accounts, b) such an account can be know as "honeybooboo666", and doesn't need my real name or phone number, and c) that account does not to automatically sign me in to services I didn't sign up for and I don't want to use on that account.
The latter is especially important so that anything "honeybooboo666" does on YouTube isn't accidentally registered under my other accounts of MyJob@BigCorp and MyRealName@Family
That's why people have separate accounts. honeybooboo666, MyJob@BigCorp and bowlofpetunias are very different entities, and trying to "out" them all as "MyRealName who works at BigCorp" is just not on.
Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is there some intrinsic reason that someone be referred > to as "Jonathan Rockway" when you send them a message via > the SMS protocol, but "jrockway" if you send that same > message via Jabber? Counter example: I'm internet-buddies with a person who goes by CUNT'N'PASTE. This is obviously not a name that complies with the Google+ naming policy, but it is the name they chose, and they should be permitted to use it.…
Here's an idea, tell your friend to grow up and use a socially acceptable name instead - revolutionary I know!
Here's another thought: in some parts of society this is a socially acceptable name!
Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?
#115Internally, 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…
There's another thing Google hasn't quite figured out, nor have any of the other big players in this space (Maybe Microsoft will, under a new CEO). They have to commit to being conglomerates, not platforms (not at a user visible layer at least). They need to run a multi-brand strategy or these troubles will only get bigger as user communities get more diverse.
Interconnecting all offerings of such a huge diversified enterprise is bound to create conflicts of interest. It doesn't work. IBM almost went bankrupt over it. It leads to idiotic decisions like killing Google Reader instead committing to serving a long tail of diverse communities.
Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?
#116I 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…
Except the oldest one is a social network that respected privacy and anonymity at it's core, and the other one has a fundamentalist ideology of exposing everyone's real name and identity.
Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Your other SMS app is broken needs to update to the new API that was introduced in KitKat, which should fix both problems: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2013/10/getting-your-... Intercepting SMS required using a hidden API before. Now it's an officially supported feature.
My apologies then. I will contact the app developer.
Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?
#118Internally, 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 don't believe Google+ management is malicious, but they do seem woefully unaware of how internet-native communities behave."
After a while, the question of motivation is a red herring. The problem is the actions, and they've been told enough times that if they claim now how to understand then they're just stupid. They're not stupid, they're contemptuous - that's different.
Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know what you were thinking when you added those interjections to every other sentence but this post is condescending as hell.
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.
I think it's relevant to ask in the context of "just what the hell do you think you're doing when you get up every morning to feed this thing? You do actually have to justify that."
Re: Ask HN: Google employees, why is G+ more important than your users?
#120Don'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.
Frankly, I don't trust enough to believe they won't change this in the future, or even that they're telling the truth now. Tracking people is the only way Google makes any money.