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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?

#231

Post by scholia »

dredmorbius wrote: post #157
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Gundotra spent 15 years at Microsoft before joining Google.

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vic_Gundotra "Before joining Google, he was a general manager at Microsoft.[3] He joined Microsoft in 1991 and eventually became General Manager of Platform Evangelism. His duties included promoting Microsoft's APIs and platforms to independent developers and helping to develop a strategy for Windows Live online services to compete with Google's web-based software applications.[4] Gundotra joined Google in June 2007, after taking a one-year delay working on charitable endeavors[which?] due to a Microsoft employee non-compete agreement."

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

#232

Post by judk »

G+ leadership thinks the internet is for brand management for bloggers, photographers, etc. They aren't being sadistic, they are simply generalizing from their own experience ad successful public strivers.

Personal private use is simply irrelevant to them. And you know, maybe it wasted time and the world would be better if people stopped having anonymous debates that don't win over any minds.

Google doesn't run cafes and bars, and they don't run reddit, and they don't want to. They aren't trying to kill Reddit.

HNers write their blog posts and seek discussion here instead of in the blog's comments. Redditors can post YouTube videos and discuss them on /r/videos

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

#233

Post by DanBC »

Reading this thread I see some confusion about what YouTube and Google require with G+ account linking.

HN is full of smart people who work with tech all day every day.

Imagine what it's like for the average person trying to create a YouTube channel but trying to avoid leaking too much information to the creeps.

It's weird to me that Google would make things tricky for content creators on Youtube. These aren't people posting cat videos, these are people who are trying to build a brand and who spend time and money creating original content - some of it is "let's play" style video, or vlogging, but some of it is young people creating music video and sharing it. Pissing off those people leaves YouTube a wasteland of cat videos, adverts off the telly, and chopped up tv programmes posted without permission. Google can make lots of money off that, but it's a shame they don't want the original content.

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

#234

Post by iancarroll »

jmduke wrote: post #4

So I don't work for Google and I've never worked for Google. I do, however, have two things you might want to keep in mind: 1. Google, according to Wikipedia, has 46,000 employees. The number of employees who are in a position to influence policy regarding Google+ adoption over the Google suite of products is likely less than one hundred (or .2%). It is entirely possible -- likely, even! -- that the other 99.8% of th…

It's quite possible -- likely, even! -- that you used that interjection a bit much.

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

#235

Post by bbulkow »

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…

The second bullet is what doesn't work.

I heard this same line about a year ago, and I created a separate "page". That page is nearly unindexed. People don't follow the page, they follow my other two profiles. When they're searching for me, that's what they find.

What I need, in order to make that second bullet true, is the ability to HIDE my first-party login pages (people find them), associate my emails with that "Page" and login to EVERY SERVICE as that public identity. This means leaving G+/Maps reviews, this means Maps Location services, everything.

With "Pages" useless and broken, the logic of this system falls apart.

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

#236

Post by maxerickson »

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…

Imagine not insisting on unique identifiers at all. The horror. Your argument pretty much boils down to you being comfortable using real names. That isn't a great argument against letting other people do something else.

(This is one of those things where enabling consolidation is pretty much orthogonal to the interesting part of the discussion, which is really more about how much latitude the service allows users. Of course giving the option for consolidation will be great for some people.)

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

#237

Post by dspeyer »

zaidf wrote: post #227
dspeyer wrote: post #218

Former Googler here. The vast majority of Googlers do not approve of G+ policies. However, Google has never been run democratically and most of the time that's probably a good thing. Furthermore, the management has been much less forthcoming than usual about the thinking behind these policies. What they have said varies and usually sounds like excuses. In short, don't expect actual information in this thread.

The vast majority of Googlers do not approve of G+ policies. For me, this is the most critical statement in the entire Google+ saga. Most Google employees do not approve of a strategy that google is betting its future on. Has this ever happened before? Probably never before. And to me, it marks a clear beginning of the end of google as we knew it. The google we grew up loving was a google that put product quality bef…

> Most Google employees do not approve of a strategy that google is betting its future on. Has this ever happened before?

It was before my time, but I'm told acquiring youtube was unpopular. That seems to have worked out. I doubt it was as unpopular, though, and there was a lot less bet on it.

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

#238

Post by snotrockets »

pygy_ wrote: post #152
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…

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…

I trust Iron less than I trust Google: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.comp.freeware/MK53RMjk4n...

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

#240

Post by kevando »

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…

Google is totally right to not care what a "sufficiently small population" of users think if it improves the over all experience. The trouble is - that small population accounts for a very large portion of the popular videos. At the end of the day, youtube is nothing special without it's giant farm of servers and fast loading videos, which they seem to struggle with. Upsetting your power users almost never works out.. Some internet math.. Google + Youtube = Digg 4?
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