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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?

#251

Post by lmm »

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 would have real difficulty sending texts to several friends (yes, the real-life kind that I invite round to my house) if my phone contacts forced me to list them under "real" name (rather than "lestaki" and "delph" and "raccoon" as they currently are).

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

#252

Post by JabavuAdams »

IanCal wrote: post #224
xgarland wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that is the point being made. The point is that there's been a lack of transparency on Google's behalf, and a lot of users, like myself, have grown tired of it.

Well taking this example, what's the lack of transparency here? All they've done is given you (not anyone else) access to files you've already uploaded under a different heading. That's it, and they were calling it "batshit fucking insane".

It breaks unsophisticated users' conceptual model of how these things work. Admittedly, that's a low bar and a difficult problem.

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

#253

Post by bashinator »

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.

Are you saying that no pre-teen girls have G+ accounts? Or that because COPPA gives Google some legislation to cover their asses if this kind of stalking were to happen, it's OK?

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

#254

Post by vicaya »

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…

If SSO is the goal, why can't Google simply implement alternative persona a la Yahoo groups that has the feature for more than a decade? You still have SSO but _can_ have different public persona per property, should users choose to do so. Isn't this a solved problem?

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

#255

Post by artichokeheart »

dspeyer wrote: post #207
minwcnt5 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you saying your less technical relatives don't ask you for advice on internet matters? And take it?

Exactly! That's how Google got it's popularity in the first place.

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

#256

Post by shawabawa3 »

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…

> A proxy front-end to YouTube would be helpful

seen http://fixyt.com?

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

#257

Post by shawabawa3 »

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…

> Why would you want to hide your identity unless you are writing something crappy or being a troll on Youtube or Play Store

Do people really think this?

How about: Why would I NOT want to hide my identity, unless I'm writing to people I know (and they know me as my identity)?

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

#258

Post by locusm »

chris_wot wrote: post #114
locusm wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an idea, tell your friend to grow up and use a socially acceptable name instead - revolutionary I know!

Here's another thought: in some parts of society this is a socially acceptable name!

The redneck parts - totally ;)

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

#259

Post by bigiain »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #155
bigiain wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because the "value" that Google generates from (toa very good first approximation) everything they do – comes from advertisers not "users". While the saying "if you're not paying for it, you're the _product_" is old and overused – any pragmatic view of Google's motivations needs to take into account that in any engineering/marketing/management argument about a user-impacting decision, "but this is what the advertisers want" is going to jold _way_ more sway than "but maybe as many as a few hundred thousand privacy conscious users might (gasp!) SIGN AN ONLINE PETITION!"

(And cynical-me suspects there's been a meeting going something like "Hey Sergey? Notice how there's been all these revelations about us snitching everyone's private email to the NSA?" "Yeah Larry, what of it? We seem to be getting away with it - it hasn't even registered a blip in our revenue/profit charts." "Yeah, _that's_ my point. The stupid fucking general public DON'T GIVE A DAMN. You know all those requests our advertisers keep making about tracking real identities across the entire internet? We could _so_ do that!" "Yeah, but what about our 'Don't be evil' motto?" "Sergey, do I have to threaten you with leaking your redtube browsing history _again?_")

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

#260

Post by yapcguy »

scholia wrote: post #231
dredmorbius wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 servic…

Maybe he never left Microsoft?

Maybe his true mission is to keep tabs on Google and given the opportunity, create long-term strategic blunders?

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