Google+ broke our trust

One of the things that struck me when I worked at Google was that its early rejection of anything that smelled of management or process directly led to the emergence of "Just get things done" sort of mantra, but the scale of early screw-ups limited the ability to get things done only to 'trusted' (generally low employee # folks with a track record) people. I managed to push a project through, in spite of the fact that I wasn't a low numbered employee, but it took 6x longer than it should have and required a crap ton more politicing than it would have if a different person had pushed it. (One person I knew there, given the combination of their history and reputation, could have probably gotten it done in 3 or 4 months)

What that does is greatly magnify the influence of a small number of people and completely nullify the influence of a large number of people. At the time I left, there was some institutional awareness of this issue (heaven knows I had shared it enough with the leadership) but the 'fix' (random injection of 'management' was itself not going well).

And all of that to say, that it takes both good people and good structure to make this happen. I realized I wasn't plugged into the organization at a place where I could make that level of change occur. So when I read the article I recognized a bit of self awareness in Sergi at his over sized influence in a negative way on the product, and a dysfunctional organization which could not guide, or if necessary prevent that influence.

The irony is that if Google was as well managed as a place like NetApp under Warmhoven or GE was under Welch, it would mega-corp scary. (Granted it still can be to an extent, but quite extremely so)

As a YouTuber for six years I can't tell you how depressing its been to watch this shit happen.

I remember attending my first VidCon, I was 18 and just graduated on high school and my first YouTube channel basically got fucked due to the fact my Adsense getting disabled (RIGHT BEFORE MY FIRST PAYCHECK WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SENT).

When I went to talk to the YouTube staff attending the event they informed me that it was out of their hands and that there was nothing they could do which is bullshit considering the exact same thing happened to a bigger YouTuber and it was fixed within a day.

YouTube sees their big channels as the example to follow - if it works for them, it must work for everyone. They gave out the Playbooks at the last VidCon in physical form and re-reading them just make sick because its not about making great content, its about how to make the most money.

They encourage you to try to hook your audience in the first 15 seconds, use all caps in your video titles BECAUSE THIS GRABS THE AUDIENCE'S ATTENTION BY THE BALLS APPARENTLY, they want you to remember to make sure you remind them to always like comment and subscribe, and try to encourage discussion by posing questions to your audience.

I understand they want content creators making money but the least they could do is actually help us rather than just pat us on the back and lie to us "Yea, these changes are gonna help grow your channel" is what we hear every time there's a new YouTube layout implemented. My first VidCon was when they announced Cosmic Panda, with every update we get less and less. I think with Google+ we were all just kind of fed up with taking the crap Google fed us and actually got mad about it.

Everyone saw this as YouTubers being angsty and hostile for no reason when in reality friends of mine who make their livings off their YouTube were seeing their views drop at least 30% minimum. Some of my friends saw 50-60% drop in views which caused some of them to rethink what they were gonna do, a few quit because they just couldn't pay the bills anymore.

YouTube needs to understand that they're not just messing with a users experience but they're also messing with people's livelihoods. They don't seem to get that, they never have.

Sorry for the rant, I needed to vent.

I was talking about domestic policy, which is the issue here. There is no doubt that the US government has done a lot of wrong, only much -- if not most -- of it has been done in the name of business. So your defense of Google (as a representative of private business) over the government, is that the government does a lot of bad when it's fighting on Google's side, and that it's not fighting against Google enough? Of course the government fights alongside capitalists most of the time, but the capitalists can do the same harm on their own (which they did when there was little government to stop them). The difference between American corporations and the American government, is that sometimes, when things get bad enough, the government turns against businesses, while the businesses themselves almost never do.

It wasn't underhanded. It was overhanded. It was forced on their users to the detriment of pretty much everything associated. Tyranny supplants trust.

If "Igor Partola" is your real name, I think statistically there's a good chance that you understand this innately.

Now, you can argue that the trust was misplaced, or that the author's use of the word "trust" to describe the basis of their users's relationship with and affinity for Google, but I think this is a quibble. It's straight-up goodwill that has been squandered, and it is not in Google's character to admit failure (Scorpion and the Frog), which further corrodes the connection between the company and its users.

"What did you expect?" Yeah, well screw you, too. If Eric Schmidt wants to tell us that if we don't want to use our real names and stuff on Google+ that we don't have to use the service at all, then hey, "I'm a step ahead of you, bub." That's why this article exists, and that's why Sergey is slithering away from G+, and that's why Vic Gundotra left, and at the end of the day Google has a massive failure on their hands and they have too much money to even countenance facts. What will be the Information Age equivalent of wearing Kleenex boxes on one's feet?

"I have nothing to admit," said Gilles Deleuze once upon a time, but the market has eaten up large companies before. While Google-large falling by the Internet wayside would be fairly seismic in historical terms, it would happen slowly enough for nobody to really notice. People already talk about the ins-and-outs of Facebook, it's not a huge jump for them to start talking about the ups-and-downs of DuckDuckGo. Google's already helping that happen by converting Chrome's address bar, where grandmas the world over type what they're looking for, into the browser's search field.

> I was talking about domestic policy, which is the issue here.

I responded to what you wrote, which had no such qualification. And I mentioned several domestic policies.

> So your defense of Google

It wasn't a defense of Google, it was a criticism of the government and a correction on what you wrote.

> Of course the government fights alongside capitalists most of the time

Which is one of its problems.