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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?

#151

Post by mbesto »

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."

Actually you don't. Let's stop pretending that any you can't trace any product/service back to something "evil".

"Oh that MacBook you use for work...ya it was made in a sweatshop in China. How do you justify that?"

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

#152

Post by pygy_ »

dredmorbius wrote: post #66
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's equally silly to force users who'd established and clearly indicated they wished to maintain separate accounts for separate services, to integrate these. Doing so where the user had clearly indicated they didn't wish that to happen was even worse. Forcing users to not be able to independently toggle whether or not services were enabled for an account is another. I neither want my pseudonymous G+ account ("Edward…

I've installed SRWare Iron [0] as a sandbox browser for GMail, Facebook, Twitter et al. It is a privacy conscious fork of Chromium (no data sent to Google except when you visit Google sites). It lags a bit behind the official release, but it's good enough for that purpose.

I use Firefox for the rest of my browsing, signed out of these services, and Chrome for webdev.

[0] https://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_download.php

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

#153

Post by slashdotaccount »

psbp wrote: post #26
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…

I'm sorry, but hearing geeks talk about quitting google as if it's some personal triumph (in nearly every google thread) makes the sentiment seem even more tone deaf and futile.

t he alpha geeks have changed from sneakily answering questions with "let me google that for you" to "I've deleted all my googles". self-driving cars and tacky universal soldier glasses don't make up for losing the early adopters.

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

#154

Post by MaysonL »

magicalist wrote: post #147
chestnut-tree wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

https://www.google.com/settings/dashboard may be what you're looking for.

Thanks for that link: it taught me something interesting.

Photos that I attached to a Gmail message were stored in my (never signed up for or desired) Picassa account. That is fucking batshit insane.

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

#155

Post by Dylan16807 »

bigiain wrote: post #83
Dylan16807 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…).

That's a very strange interpretation to me.

They clearly care a lot about G+.

So why would saying G+ > users imply that the value of users is small?

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

#156

Post by bambax »

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…

I don't "want" a unique identifier; I don't mind having one, but I don't care having many. I already have different identifiers for different services owned by different companies, so why should I care that just because Youtube and Gmail happen to be owned by Google, it's an absolute necessity that I have the same identifier on both services?

I don't care and don't even need to know that Google search, Gmail and Youtube are owned by the same company; to me they are separate systems.

The "unique identifier" approach is solving a problem that does not exist.

Then, trying to force people to have a public "social" profile under their own legal name, under the cover of this non-problem, is just crazy and arrogant.

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

#157

Post by dredmorbius »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #115
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…

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…

It's not without some irony that I note Vic Gundotra's name has been circulated as a candidate for the Microsoft CEO position.

In some ways I feel he'd be the perfect successor to the legacies of Gates and Ballmer.

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

#158

Post by IanCal »

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…

> burning every other Google service and product to the ground

I think this is a massive exaggeration. The people who don't care about linking their accounts (like me) aren't filling up the front page of HN with "The google plus thing is fine I guess" stories. I don't care if they ask for my phone number, I've got an Android phone so the data is all already there, and I like the security of having it text me to check it's actually me signing in from some new computer.

I genuinely find the level of complaints embarrassing. I've seen someone call being asked to create a G+ account "sickening". Sickening. What an astonishing first world problem, that one of the worst things happening to them is being asked to sign up for a free account with a company you already have a free account with. The horror!

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

#159

Post by dredmorbius »

omegant wrote: post #141
dredmorbius wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's equally silly to force users who'd established and clearly indicated they wished to maintain separate accounts for separate services, to integrate these. Doing so where the user had clearly indicated they didn't wish that to happen was even worse. Forcing users to not be able to independently toggle whether or not services were enabled for an account is another. I neither want my pseudonymous G+ account ("Edward…

For me the simplest solution is keeping different accounts active in different browsers. I've not cheked all the options with youtube and such, so maybe it doesnt work for youtube alias, but it seems to behave correctly so far to have several accounts open at the same time but not merged.

That's largely what I do.

I'd been remaining logged into Google pseudonymously much of the time in an incognito Chrome session. I'd occasionally hop onto my other Google accounts in another Chrome session, though by preference I'd stay logged out.

Among the other benefits: simply not having to put up with the blasted Notifications icon every time I'm on a Google property.

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

#160

Post by dredmorbius »

IanCal wrote: post #158
dsl wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> burning every other Google service and product to the ground I think this is a massive exaggeration. The people who don't care about linking their accounts (like me) aren't filling up the front page of HN with "The google plus thing is fine I guess" stories. I don't care if they ask for my phone number, I've got an Android phone so the data is all already there, and I like the security of having it text me to check…

If you think it's a first-world problem, ask yourself what the situation in a third-world or repressive government would be where all search and email traffic would be individually assignable and identifiable as it passed through the national firewall and surveillance systems.
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