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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?

#121

Post by bowlofpetunias »

nostromo wrote: post #11

It seems simple, honestly. The likelihood that people will stop using YouTube because of G+ is nil.

That's because YouTube still has value (although deteriorating rapidly with or without the G+ issue). G+ has none.

The effect seems to be more that people gradually reduce their Google usage. I've cleaned out my private Google account, deleted my Google+ and after I migrated my mail it will be gone and subsequently replaced by a new G+ account of which every single letter is completely fake.

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

#122

Post by davidgerard »

yxhuvud wrote: post #98
jrockway wrote: post #34

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…

Possibly. What really doesn't make sense is migrating someone to Google+ without asking, and then throwing them out since the account name didn't meet the higher name standard there. This has happened to a friend of mine.

Or telling them their real name doesn't look like a real name, and suggesting they send Google a copy of their passport. (Two friends of mine, one Swedish and one Israeli. 'Cos those people don't have real, proper names. And Google's policy totally isn't racist - it just has, uh, racist effects.)

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

#123

Post by davidgerard »

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.

HN is legendarily an inward-focused bunch of SV startup-wannabe brogrammers, but it's also a pretty reliable weathervane for where hot technology is heading in the next year or two. And what companies have lost it in the eyes of the very smartest technologists.

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

#125

Post by igravious »

konspence wrote: post #56
RodericDay wrote: post #21

Earlier 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.

It was possibly - likely, even! - a botched use of classical rhetoric.

It is quite possible - likely, even even! - that this rhetorical flourish is contagious, habit-forming and memetic.

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

#126

Post by eonil »

DISCLAIMER: I'm not a Google employee. This is my guess.

Users doesn't make money for Google. Users are valuable only when they're in sellable state. Ad companies don't want to buy fully anonymous, bogus or false profiles. They want real personal information from real human. To increase efficiency of target reaching / marketing cost.

Until now, Google didn't need to worry about quality of their product - I mean their users profiles. Because that was valuable enough. Because nobody else could provided anything better.

But now it's a little bit different. Especially with Facebook. Facebook provides better product - more accurate, proven, related, real personal information. There's mostly no spamming, bogus, false account. They offer interconnected and very clearly tasted profiles. The most fantastic thing is all the informations are input by users themselves. So accuracy of the data is incredible. Google' product - user profile - is mostly tracked by usage history. So inaccurate. People refuse to input something on Google. This degrades quality of their product.

To the marketers, Google product - user profiles - are now inferior. Nobody wants to buy Google product anymore. Not completely useless yet, but it's not competitive product to what Facebook provides. If this situation continues, Google has to bargain a lot, and finally will lose the only their profitable business - ad selling. Ad is not just an empty space on a website. Nowadays, you can't sell ad in high price without targeting information. Google's targeting was best in old days, but now Facebook offers even better which makes Google product crap.

That's why Google is pushing everybody to their copy of Facebook - G+. To survive. By making money. G+ can make money by delivering quality user profiles to marketers. But you, the users, are just nothing if you don't offer that informations. Because without informations, your account is just an useless binary junk which can't make money.

If you still love Google, please, feed them your personal information. That's the only way you can keep them (and their services) to survive. Anyway don't forget that any further marketing junks are also your responsibility. That's what you pay for Google stuff.

P.S.

If you think something wrong in my posting, please correct me. I also want to know if there's any other reason.

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

#127

Post by jrockway »

jmillikin wrote: post #69
jrockway wrote: post #34

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…

> 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.…

Engineering is about making compromises. Given limited time, it probably makes more sense to support people with names like "First Last" because they are more common personal monikers than one-word obscenities with special characters in the middle. Yes, you'll annoy people named CUNT'N'PASTE, and that's regrettable. But you'll probably make a lot of First Lasts happy too.

It's important to balance the positives and negatives of a decision. On HN, we mostly see the negatives, since that's the sort of thing that people are willing to spend mental energy writing about on their computer. But surely some people like the new YouTube comments or Google+, right?

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

#128

Post by bowlofpetunias »

saurik wrote: post #52
Negitivefrags wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah. The only system with a separate login was ever YouTube, and I think that may have only apploed if your account was ancient anyway.

> The only system with a separate login was ever YouTube

Rewrite history much?

Every platform Google ever acquired had it's own login, and Google didn't have a login for a loooong time.

But all of that is besides the point. This is not about SSO, this is about an SSO fully integrated with a service geared at destroying anonymity and privacy.

I wouldn't mind a single Google login if that was what it was: a login, a username and password. Google+ is so, so much more.

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

#129

Post by Havoc »

username223 wrote: post #120
jmillikin wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed. I recently discovered that they even track you when using incognito. e.g. I got a youtube suggestion whilst in incognito that I had searched for 2 weeks prior & the type of search precludes the possibility of it being a co-incidence. So much for no cookies in incognito...

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

#130

Post by bluthru »

mcphilip wrote: post #38

Not a google employee, but this disgusting mistreatment of its users may actually be a good thing if it blows up in their faces. My prediction is that the change to automatically showing the users g+ profile pic next to comments will be what gets them in hot water by empowering stalkers and trolls. Here's a simple example, if you go to the video for Miley Cyrus - Wrecking Ball, there are the usual back and forth comm…

I hadn't considered this angle before. It's often touted that transparency would make online discourse safer and more accountable, but stalking is a very real scenario where it would not.
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