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

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

#131

Post by chestnut-tree » Sun, Nov 17, 2013, 10:30 AM UTC

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…

It makes sense to have a single sign-on system (although this also raises questions of privacy over what actions are tracked and recorded by Google - I'm guessing evrything possible is tracked and recorded).

Why doesn't Google provide a dashboard for all their services accessible from every Google service when you're signed in? The Dashboard presents all of Google's services with the ability to opt-in to additional services.

So, for example, if I sign up for a GMail account, my dashboard only shows I've activated the GMail service, but also lists all the other Google services such as Google+, Docs, Drive etc. You can use the dashboard to promote your services rather than cluttering the GMail interface with promos for Google+, Google Chat, Hangouts etc. It's a bit ironic that one of the stated goals of Gmail is to minimise distractions and yet the GMail interface is stuffed with promos for other Google services.

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

#132

Post by cromwellian » Sun, Nov 17, 2013, 10:33 AM UTC

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.

Actually, that's false. Most of the money Google makes from ads are not behaviorally targeted ads, but keyword targeted. If you subtract out YouTube 'behavior target' which seems more targeted based on what you watched, the portion of money Google actually makes from using 3rd party website tracking is quite small.

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

#133

Post by jrockway » Sun, Nov 17, 2013, 10:36 AM UTC

dizzystar wrote: post #55

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…

>> 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…

I define friend as someone I'd invite over to my house. Those are the people I interact with on social networking sites and send YouTube links to.

Discussion forums are, socially, a very different thing than hanging out with friends, even though they both involve people and saying things. That's what I think HN collectively misses when talking about Google+ or Facebook; they think those are Internet Discussion Forums when they are actually something for closer friends.

You have to understand that very few people are willing to write this much on the Internet for public consumption by total strangers -- we are very unusual people, and most online services aren't designed for us. That's why we're typing hundreds of words into a Web 1.0 GUI written in a custom programming language, rather than using Facebook or G+ or Snapchat or whatever.

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

#134

Post by michaelt » Sun, Nov 17, 2013, 10:43 AM UTC

davidgerard wrote: post #119

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.

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."

If "this thing" is Google it's fairly understandable why someone would work there.

It's only been in the past year or two that Google's been popularly seen as focusing on G+ to the expense of users and innovation. Internally a lot of parts of the company are probably quite similar to the Google of 2010 which everyone liked.

And if they hate social networks what are they going to do, move to Facebook or Twitter?

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

#135

Post by znowi » Sun, Nov 17, 2013, 10:53 AM UTC

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…

> Internally, G+ is marketed as a unified login/account system

Wait, there's already Google account - a unified login. Is it not?

> though "Pages" continues to be a confusing and unclear term

Pages were meant to be confusing because you discourage multiple identities. Most people have no idea they even exist.

> I don't believe Google+ management is malicious, but they do seem woefully unaware of how internet-native communities behave.

I'd be glad to attribute it to stupidity, as well, but it's one big assumption to consider the whole upper management at Google+ (one of the crown jewels) "woefully" incompetent at the very subject they were put to manage.

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

#136

Post by teaneedz » Sun, Nov 17, 2013, 10:55 AM UTC

cdash wrote: post #108

alayne wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They care, it just takes a little longer at times. One day, a person wakes up and realizes that the technophiles are someplace else, all of those blogs, videos and snippets they've been seeing hit home, and they have been personally affected by a real name policy. It starts someplace.

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

#137

Post by vinitool76 » Sun, Nov 17, 2013, 11:03 AM UTC

I don't get what all the fuss is all about. Why would you want to hide your identity unless you are writing something crappy or being a troll on Youtube or Play Store. A single sign-on service is a great decision and that't the way things should be when you have multiple services from same company.

You guys don't mind using all services like Spotify, Quora etc that are so closely tied up with Facebook login. But when google tries to integrate it's own services it is so wrong? What are we, Hypocrites?

Coming to Google+, it is a much better designed and well thought off social network. What is the whole issue about?

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

#138

Post by airtonix » Sun, Nov 17, 2013, 11:11 AM UTC

How is it a disaster? I keep hearing this from people who like to peddle filth on youtube. People who love Apple, people who have no problems giving up their privacy with Facebook.

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

#139

Post by voyou » Sun, Nov 17, 2013, 11:11 AM UTC

eonil wrote: post #126

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…

"They want real personal information from real human."

I don't understand why they would want that. The kind of analytics data you can get from a Google profile is much more useful to advertisers than vague demographic categories like age or location (I mean, you can guess at these categories from Google's data, but if you know that someone acts like a 23 year old woman from Austin, that's more useful for marketing purposes than knowing that they actually are a 23 year old woman from Austin).

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

#140

Post by teaneedz » Sun, Nov 17, 2013, 11:14 AM UTC

pavs wrote: post #24

nacs wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite the opposite for me. I've started moving my stuff off of Google as this was one of the last straws in my book. I'd already switched to using DDG and Startpage for my searches and am currently in the process of moving my Google apps email to my own server. When that's done I plan on deleting my Youtube and Google accounts. This latest Google+ push has made me realize just how far Google is willing to go to…

You are not a target user for google products and services, thats why they are not too worried about how you or users like you feel about it. See also: Facebook. A lot of noise was made about facebook privacy (inside the HN and other tech eco chambers) and a lot of noise was made about people quitting facebook because of privacy. But in reality probably only .00000001% of facebook users probably quit because of priva…

It will harm the bottom line. When user experience isn't taken seriously, the effects will be felt - yes at the bottom line. Facebook is now admitting it has a problem in the "cool" teen department. Because of Facebook's privacy blunders, it has put itself in the spotlight whenever a change is needed to the ToS, DUP, or Privacy Policy. Does anyone really think that it costs Facebook less to deal with these issues (dollars and time)? Google will not be an exception. Someone, will come along and fill in the gap to make their marketing costs even more interesting.