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Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

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Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#191

Post by dredmorbius »

nostrademons wrote: post #39
saidajigumi wrote: post #34

> Former CEO Eric Schmidt admitted in an interview at the D conference in 2011 that he missed the boat on the rise of identity on the Internet. > “I clearly knew that I had to do something, and I failed to do it,” he said. “A CEO should take responsibility. I screwed up.” I think Eric screwed up in a deeper way that this quote admits. Google+ came up at a time of broader dissatisfaction with other social networks, pa…

Eric had already stepped down as CEO at the time the Real Names decision was made. That came from Vic, Larry, and the team leadership.

Schmidt was unapologetically selling G+ as "an identity service".

Gundotra continued that drive until it became clear that the userbase would (and did) revolt.

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#192

Post by dredmorbius »

gwillen wrote: post #153
kibwen wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to being safe, understandable, and wrong, it was completely out of touch. Did nobody stop to think why people would ever elect to use MetalHead444 over their real name in the first place? The only explanation I can fathom was that it was a decision motivated by engineers and marketers rather than by anyone genuinely concerned about user experience.

The engineers -- the ones down in the trenches -- practically revolted over it. The decision was purely from On High, i.e. managerial. It came down from the highest levels.

And that's why I now perceive Google to be rotten from the head.

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#193

Post by dredmorbius »

kibwen wrote: post #163
gwillen wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The engineers -- the ones down in the trenches -- practically revolted over it. The decision was purely from On High, i.e. managerial. It came down from the highest levels.

Glad to hear it. I apologize to Google's engineers for my uninformed implication.

I wish more had protested more strongly or simply walked.

I know it's easy to project actions on others, but really, that was a BAD decision.

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#194

Post by alttab »

zmmmmm wrote: post #173
saidajigumi wrote: post #34

> Former CEO Eric Schmidt admitted in an interview at the D conference in 2011 that he missed the boat on the rise of identity on the Internet. > “I clearly knew that I had to do something, and I failed to do it,” he said. “A CEO should take responsibility. I screwed up.” I think Eric screwed up in a deeper way that this quote admits. Google+ came up at a time of broader dissatisfaction with other social networks, pa…

I completely agree with you, but don't forget one other hugely important decision wrt to G+ that was controversial at the time: the refusal to release a full fledge API. To this day, the only real client for Google+ is the one made by Google. We've all come to accept it at this point, but back then Google was a company entirely built around the concept of APIs for all their services. No matter what the service, you c…

The same cross section of society that has already given Google their most meaningful data.

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#195

Post by dredmorbius »

ericras wrote: post #160
chime wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative to real names is not necessarily Youtube or 4chan. Reddit, HN, Fark, Mefi, Slashdot, and tons of other lard communities work fine with just usernames. The alternative to real names is moderation, policies, flagging/reporting etc. Abuse is always a problem in large communities regardless of real name or username policy and many different solutions exist for each type of abuse. Forcing real name usage w…

It is possible, I agree, but Reddit, HN and others have much more active moderation than Google was probably interested in creating.

That's an entirely solvable problem, and numerous key G+ voices (Robert Scoble and Lauren Weinstein come particularly to mind) have long lambasted Google over the lack of suitable moderation and noise controls.

The effect at G+ was that there was a very narrow sweet spot for intelligent conversation -- you needed a large number (~1000 - 10,000 minimum) of followers to generate real traction, but past 100k, the ability to moderate threads was highly tedious. Lauren was (and is) heavy on the one tool he's got, the ban hammer, blocking people. The reasons often aren't that the individuals in question are doing anything particularly wrong, but that the dynamics given the other people likely to come to the thread will simply go haywire.

Or you end up with accounts such as The Economist whose posts are interesting but comments are invariably almost totally inane.

Google exhibited (and continue to exhibit) a profound lack of understanding of real community.

That carries over as well to G+ "Commnities" which are a complete fucking abortion.

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#196

Post by dredmorbius »

encoderer wrote: post #46
saidajigumi wrote: post #34

> Former CEO Eric Schmidt admitted in an interview at the D conference in 2011 that he missed the boat on the rise of identity on the Internet. > “I clearly knew that I had to do something, and I failed to do it,” he said. “A CEO should take responsibility. I screwed up.” I think Eric screwed up in a deeper way that this quote admits. Google+ came up at a time of broader dissatisfaction with other social networks, pa…

My impression was that G+ was stymied by a bad go-to-market strategy. I'm sure the real names issue didn't help, but I'm not certain it had the impact you're suggesting. Their go to market strategy was essentially the same as the Chinese government-run construction companies that build an entire city from farmland, cut the ribbon and expect a stampede. Getting it right is complicated and I couldn't do it justice in a…

Fostering community is a fragile process. Google simply stepped in the brown stinky stuff far too often. The initial beta, the public release (too soon), the lack of features (no search ... from the Internet's leading search company?). Some huge reorientations of direction. A miserable client experience (it's a hugely bloated web page, and I still can't do more than a trivial amount on it).

Real Names, the SEO takeover, and the YouTube Anschluss were really only the icing on the cake.

The first drove me to kill my personally ascribed account and create one under this nym which I use in a few places online. The second largely dismayed me. Things looked up briefly a year or so back as search got more powerful and enough interesting content had accumulated to provide some actual utility to the site. Last May's redesign, the War on Words, and the YouTube Anschluss were all pretty awful.

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#197

Post by dredmorbius »

georgeecollins wrote: post #180
encoderer wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression was that G+ was stymied by a bad go-to-market strategy. I'm sure the real names issue didn't help, but I'm not certain it had the impact you're suggesting. Their go to market strategy was essentially the same as the Chinese government-run construction companies that build an entire city from farmland, cut the ribbon and expect a stampede. Getting it right is complicated and I couldn't do it justice in a…

I think that is really smart and makes a lot of sense. Facebook started out by servicing a niche, Twitter was used by tech nerds.

As much as I detest virtually everything Facebook, it's growth strategy from Harvard to Ivies to selective edus to all was great. From the get-go, it was the place to go to find a crowd more exclusive than the one you were in already.

That ended with mass-market availability, but it's provided steam to roll on for a while.

Google had an initial base which was, I think, the seed around which it could have grown a community but blew it by releasing publicly too early.

Among other failings.

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#198

Post by dredmorbius »

zmmmmm wrote: post #173
saidajigumi wrote: post #34

> Former CEO Eric Schmidt admitted in an interview at the D conference in 2011 that he missed the boat on the rise of identity on the Internet. > “I clearly knew that I had to do something, and I failed to do it,” he said. “A CEO should take responsibility. I screwed up.” I think Eric screwed up in a deeper way that this quote admits. Google+ came up at a time of broader dissatisfaction with other social networks, pa…

I completely agree with you, but don't forget one other hugely important decision wrt to G+ that was controversial at the time: the refusal to release a full fledge API. To this day, the only real client for Google+ is the one made by Google. We've all come to accept it at this point, but back then Google was a company entirely built around the concept of APIs for all their services. No matter what the service, you c…

The lack of external access to G+ remains a massive pain point. I'm fucking thrilled by the ubiquitous RSS integration at reddit -- it's pretty amazing.

For G+ I've got to go to the damned site (which is a browser bloat pig) to follow stuff. Which I avoid if at all possible.

http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1sxfar/reddit_r...

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#199

Post by dredmorbius »

eitland wrote: post #164
saidajigumi wrote: post #34

> Former CEO Eric Schmidt admitted in an interview at the D conference in 2011 that he missed the boat on the rise of identity on the Internet. > “I clearly knew that I had to do something, and I failed to do it,” he said. “A CEO should take responsibility. I screwed up.” I think Eric screwed up in a deeper way that this quote admits. Google+ came up at a time of broader dissatisfaction with other social networks, pa…

The easy nym fix is to create a "page" with your handle. The "page" can post, comment on YouTube etc. Not heavily advertised though, I only became aware of it when I had to give up my old YouTube account. You can easily switch between main account and nym account and you only need one password.

That "easy nym fix" still requires storing your real ID with Google.

That's a non-starter for many of us, as it's still available: to hackers, national security, subpoena processes, etc. See Bruce Schneier's recent Stanford talk.

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#200

Post by dredmorbius »

deelowe wrote: post #48
saidajigumi wrote: post #34

> Former CEO Eric Schmidt admitted in an interview at the D conference in 2011 that he missed the boat on the rise of identity on the Internet. > “I clearly knew that I had to do something, and I failed to do it,” he said. “A CEO should take responsibility. I screwed up.” I think Eric screwed up in a deeper way that this quote admits. Google+ came up at a time of broader dissatisfaction with other social networks, pa…

Real Names didn't come from Eric. He was gone by the time G+ rolled out. Vic had a large hand in the real names decision.

Schmidt was selling G+ as "an identity platform".
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