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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?

#241

Post by vinitool76 »

redwood wrote: post #182
vinitool76 wrote: post #137

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…

Try thinking this through. If necessary try to imagine what it's like in others' shoes. Please try to grant this the critical evaluation it deserves.

I have thought about this. Don't you think that the crowd at HN just goes too hard on anything Google does? Frankly i don't feel anything wrong is have a SSO for all google apps. There are always a way to hide identity if you truly want to be anonymous.

Agreed, there are some concerns as well. But again, aren't we living in an age where all our data is being sold to marketing agencies and companies. FB has been doing it since ever.

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

#242

Post by afsina »

googlemployee1 wrote: post #6

I work pretty high up at Google, and I (obviously) made this account to post in this thread. Google is effectively "dead" in my opinion, and this mirrors (at least in my experience) the feelings of many of our other higher-ups who are concerned with technology rather than the business. Everything has stagnated, it's no longer fun to work here, and it's entirely about making money now. The claims that we don't bend ov…

Oh... My reply is like an old YouTube comment. "Fake."

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

#243

Post by pygy_ »

snotrockets wrote: post #238
pygy_ wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I don't see anything that would make me not trust SRWare in that thread.

The main problem I have with it is that it lags behind Chrome (currently two versions).

Since I only browse safe sites, I'm not too worried (almost only Gmail, I barely use the other two).

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

#244

Post by nostrademons »

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…

GMail and Instant both had significant internal resistance, as did several projects that were (rightfully, IMHO) canned. Meanwhile, Wave and Buzz were beloved by Googlers.

Much as it pains me to admit that I'm not omniscient, there are ample examples of products where the majority Googler consensus does not reflect the majority market consensus. There are also ample examples of products where the initial market consensus doesn't reflect the final market consensus. (For example, Chrome was beloved internally by Googlers, but was met with a lot of external skepticism when it launched, and then eventually became the dominant browser.)

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

#245

Post by dredmorbius »

IanCal wrote: post #208
nisa wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This option is not available for me. I can't disconnect my Youtube account without deleting Google+. I also found no way to create a pseudonymous page for my Youtube Account. And I've found no way to delete my Youtube account. After searching and looking around in the user forums for some time I've gave up.

Does this link not work for you: http://www.youtube.com/account_revert For me this link appears under the general account settings on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/account This is what my account settings page looks like: http://i.imgur.com/NrEnfyY.png I changed from my real name to somenamefortestingpurposes, and seem to be able to change this to anything else. I've also tested posting comments with this, and they…

NB: I get the same results nisa does.

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

#246

Post by mcgwiz »

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…

Verified/full names are incompatible with profiles/content that are public by default.

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

#247

Post by fauigerzigerk »

gbog wrote: post #167
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…

That's a bit short. Consumers of coffee, biscuits, etc do not need to know their trademarks are owned by the same legal entity or their subsidies, nor would they benefit from this knowledge. Completely the opposite with Google or Microsoft. You need to know that YouTube is Google because it has an impact on privacy things, and you arguably benefit from their link with single sign on, reduced complexity, unified notif…

You're repeating the justification for the status quo, but at some point these undeniable benefits of an integrated platform start to be dominated by growing complexities, weird interdependencies and conflicts of interest. I think we're over the tipping point now.

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

#248

Post by dredmorbius »

Kequc wrote: post #196
acdha wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It leads to idiotic decisions like killing Google Reader instead committing to serving a long tail of diverse communities. Reader was even more significant than that: had they actually been trying to make Google+ a desirable service, first-class integration with Reader would have brought a large, very active core of G+ users to launch the new service. Instead, they shipped something which had obviously had almost n…

I've had nothing buy a joyous experience there. Spam? Don't add spam to your activity feed. Just remove it from your circles, gone. An intern built it? It's one of the most finely crafted, expensive looking pieces of social software that has ever been built. Excuse me but what the hell is this fantasy about Google plus? I'm not convinced that Reader was shut down and that Google plus was meant to be its replacement,…

I'm an admittedly harsh critic of G+ (though I very honestly wanted to like it).

Someone who's more inclined to be favorable is Robert Scoble. He worked under Vic Gundotra at Microsoft, and joined the service early. He's also had a long list of rather frighteningly consistent complaints:

https://plus.google.com/111091089527727420853/posts/9mA8XCdu... https://plus.google.com/+Scobleizer/posts/BKwDFRxJYqT https://plus.google.com/+Scobleizer/posts/LTr6RedEeVF https://plus.google.com/+Scobleizer/posts/QzCGxPkhNd8

As for finely crafted, I've got about 2000 lines of CSS I've written to take G+ from what Google shipped to this:

https://plus.google.com/photos/104092656004159577193/albums/...

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

#249

Post by reikonomusha »

judk wrote: post #226
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…

Preteen girls are not allowed to have accounts. That's COPPA.

Well that will surely stop them.

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

#250

Post by Kequc »

dredmorbius wrote: post #248
Kequc wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had nothing buy a joyous experience there. Spam? Don't add spam to your activity feed. Just remove it from your circles, gone. An intern built it? It's one of the most finely crafted, expensive looking pieces of social software that has ever been built. Excuse me but what the hell is this fantasy about Google plus? I'm not convinced that Reader was shut down and that Google plus was meant to be its replacement,…

I'm an admittedly harsh critic of G+ (though I very honestly wanted to like it). Someone who's more inclined to be favorable is Robert Scoble. He worked under Vic Gundotra at Microsoft, and joined the service early. He's also had a long list of rather frighteningly consistent complaints: https://plus.google.com/111091089527727420853/posts/9mA8XCdu... https://plus.google.com/+Scobleizer/posts/BKwDFRxJYqT https://plus.…

Wow that is awful what you made. What?
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