Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down • Hacker News Board

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#91

Post by _noqo » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 3:16 AM UTC

tdicola wrote: post #25

aesthetics1 wrote: post #8

I imagine in the coming months (years?) we will see Google transition away from Google+ as a catchall platform, and back to standalone solutions similar to their offerings from the pre-Google+ days. A bit off-topic: I think it's the right move for them. Google+ was (and still is) a pretty cool platform. It has a lot of neat features that existing social networks lack. Facebook just somehow holds on to their userbase…

Can they bring Google Reader back now? I'm still bitter about it being killed to focus on Google+. Now that Google+ is dead in the water it makes the decision to kill Reader even worse.

I think that they are going to focus on the product Google Newsstand* following the idea of hosted content (Apple News, Facebook instant articles).

*I think they are going to change the name and redesign the product to push forward the adoption.

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#92

Post by _noqo » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 3:29 AM UTC

tdicola wrote: post #34

jonursenbach wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Reader was in maintenance mode for years, and companies that appeared when it disappeared have gone above and beyond what they offered. See: Feedly.com

Feedly has improved a lot but it still doesn't display feeds as densely as Reader did and I feel a lot slower getting through a lot of feeds. Searching for articles was fantastic on Google Reader, but with Feedly it never works. Maybe I need to pay to enable search? Ultimately search 'just worked' on Google Reader and never works for me on Feedly. If Reader was in maintenance mode then that's even worse to have kille…

My problem with Feedly is UI/UX. Web is.. fine, but the app have really weird interactions and is clunky.

I use Digg Reader. Web is awesome, love the simplicity, the app need some love but is way more better than Feddly. The thing I don't like about Digg Reader is the Digg part, I only want my lovely curated RSS feeds.

Also try NewsBlur, Feedreader, The Old Reader and Newsvibe but Digg Reader was the best for my needs.

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#93

Post by mvgoogler » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 3:47 AM UTC

chinhodado wrote: post #66

mvgoogler wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work on the backend for Google Photos (and Google+ Photos and Picasaweb). Picasaweb, Google+ Photos and Google Photos all store the photos in the same place. There was never any need to "shuffle gigabytes of photos" when moving from picasaweb to G+ Photos and there won't be any needed to move from G+ Photos to Google Photos. I don't see howany of that adds up to "do not rely on Google for your photo storage needs".

Can you comment on why Google Photos is missing so many features from Google+ Photos? Things like date picker, EXIF editor are missing. There's no highlight view, there's no way to make the detail pane of a picture open by default, and it takes a huge number of steps to rotate a picture, which I think is one of the most common editing tasks.

I'm a backend infrastructure guy rather than a product guy so I'll do my best but please take it all with a large grain of salt. I was privy to some of the higher-level discussions, but I spend most of my days down in the guts of the system. I don't spend much time debating the finer points of product direction or user experience (and the world is probably a better place because of that!)

Conceptually, Google Photos is very much a V1 product. It might sound a little weird since the team is experienced and a lot of the technology it is built on has been through multiple iterations.

But from a _product perspective_ Google Photos is a new product.

The product team was really focused on a few key aspects of the user experience (I'm not going to try to enumerate them here. The main reason is that I would certainly do a poor job of explaining them. The other reasons are that I can't remember how much of the strategy has been talked about publicly and it doesn't really matter for the point I'm trying to make).

Being focused meant saying no to things - at least for the initial launch.

So the first answer to your question is that for most of the mentioned features the answer is that they simply didn't make the cut for V1. I can't comment on which features will or won't make it to future versions.

Date picker is an interesting one. Really, the only reason it existed was to work around how painful it was access older pictures in Google+ Photos, Date picker was added to (somewhat) ease that pain.

In building a new product, there was a desire to make things like date-picker unnecessary. Make finding older photos so fast and painless that you don't even need it. Try grabbing the scroll bar in the new web-app - you can scroll to any time you want in seconds. On mobile, it's easy to zoom out, scroll and zoom back in.

There is also search, which often means you don't even _need_ to scroll through your photos to find what you want. Just this morning my wife wanted me to find a picture of a tatoo from six years ago. I was able to find it by searching for tatoo. It was awesome! In Google+ Photos I would have spent a long time trying to figure out the right date range and then searching around.

If you really want to jump to a date, just type it in search - I just tried "September 2012" and "9/23/2012" and they both worked great.

So I would argue that date-picker just flat out isn't needed any more, because the team focused on some core user experience flows.

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#94

Post by _noqo » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 3:48 AM UTC

aesthetics1 wrote: post #11

blintzing wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it funny that we're even having this conversation? That Google can offer two products, differentiated by a single character (Google+ Photos and Google Photos), with few obvious indicators as to which I should use? It's confusing to me, but trying to explain it to my mom is absolutely impossible. I wonder whether the average user even knows there's a difference between the two. It's a perfect example of unnecess…

I really feel like it is just to cleanse it of the connection to Google+. The product should have been an evolution of Google+ Photos, but they are clearly trying to de-couple services from Google+. Look at the Inbox vs Gmail experiment for example. While not tied to Google+, Inbox runs parallel to Gmail and accesses the same things. Just a different window dressing. I'm sure many at Google want to see Inbox take ove…

I think that the strategy there was make a new product (Inbox) to test how to reinvent Gmail. Gmail needs a redesign but have a very large user base to take the risk of make mistakes. With Inbox they are free to innovate and try to fix the email problem without carrying a giant on they shoulders. I think even Google don't know yet what's is going to do after.

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#95

Post by chinhodado » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:02 AM UTC

mvgoogler wrote: post #93

chinhodado wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you comment on why Google Photos is missing so many features from Google+ Photos? Things like date picker, EXIF editor are missing. There's no highlight view, there's no way to make the detail pane of a picture open by default, and it takes a huge number of steps to rotate a picture, which I think is one of the most common editing tasks.

I'm a backend infrastructure guy rather than a product guy so I'll do my best but please take it all with a large grain of salt. I was privy to some of the higher-level discussions, but I spend most of my days down in the guts of the system. I don't spend much time debating the finer points of product direction or user experience (and the world is probably a better place because of that!) Conceptually, Google Photos…

That makes a lot of sense, thanks for the reply!

Still, I find it kinda weird that Google feel the need to reinvent the wheel and redesign the whole site from scratch, when the old Google+ Photos is generally considered to be very well built. Why can't you just take Google+ Photos front end and build it up from there?

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#96

Post by prawn » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:09 AM UTC

jaredsohn wrote: post #33

prawn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never seen Picasa used for anything but spam. Can't think of anyone I know who actually uses it properly.

I converted my parents over to Picasa when it came out and they still use it; they don't have interest in moving family photos over to the cloud. I am assuming that your comment re: spam is about is about Picasaweb (it doesn't make much sense to me for users to submit spam into their own desktop software). Perhaps a reason for this is that it mostly gets used by people who started with the desktop software and those…

I get emails from companies who upload their product photos to Picasa and then use the share feature to spam. No matter how many I marked as spam, they still make it through unhindered.

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#97

Post by newscracker » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:23 AM UTC

pnathan wrote: post #19

aesthetics1 wrote: post #8

I imagine in the coming months (years?) we will see Google transition away from Google+ as a catchall platform, and back to standalone solutions similar to their offerings from the pre-Google+ days. A bit off-topic: I think it's the right move for them. Google+ was (and still is) a pretty cool platform. It has a lot of neat features that existing social networks lack. Facebook just somehow holds on to their userbase…

I actually have really enjoyed the UI for G+. I think it's really a technically excellent platform that has totally failed to execute well on the userbase side.

I like the UI for G+, especially for the posts and comments. I don't like the design of the menus though. On a comparative scale, Facebook is ugly and mostly cluttered.

Tying up all Google services together with G+ really put me off the entire platform, and the reversal in some parts may be a bit too late. On the privacy front, I also trust Google a bit more than I trust Facebook.

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#98

Post by devrajtayade » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:32 AM UTC

Devrajtayade

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#99

Post by newscracker » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:34 AM UTC

Lazare wrote: post #73

aesthetics1 wrote: post #8

I imagine in the coming months (years?) we will see Google transition away from Google+ as a catchall platform, and back to standalone solutions similar to their offerings from the pre-Google+ days. A bit off-topic: I think it's the right move for them. Google+ was (and still is) a pretty cool platform. It has a lot of neat features that existing social networks lack. Facebook just somehow holds on to their userbase…

> Facebook has turned into a pretty strange place compared to its early years. Yep. At least among my friends, family, and acquaintances, nobody posts on their wall anymore; it's a wasteland of weird automated posts and the rare half-hearted re-share of a funny story about a cat. Where the action is in the groups . Groups for friends, patient support groups, guild groups for MMOs, groups about crafts or hobbies. Whic…

Apart from the privacy issues, one thing I really despise in Facebook is search. It literally sucks! Unlike Gmail, Facebook is built as a platform where information goes to die a quick death. In groups, as on web forums, a big drag is people asking the same questions again and again. Searching for information even by admins who would like to help people out is cumbersome and difficult due to the way Facebook search works (or doesn't work).

I really long for email discussion threads tied into a web interface with a great search engine behind (like on the * Group platforms from the early web).

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#100

Post by dpark » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:41 AM UTC

_noqo wrote: post #92

tdicola wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feedly has improved a lot but it still doesn't display feeds as densely as Reader did and I feel a lot slower getting through a lot of feeds. Searching for articles was fantastic on Google Reader, but with Feedly it never works. Maybe I need to pay to enable search? Ultimately search 'just worked' on Google Reader and never works for me on Feedly. If Reader was in maintenance mode then that's even worse to have kille…

My problem with Feedly is UI/UX. Web is.. fine, but the app have really weird interactions and is clunky. I use Digg Reader. Web is awesome, love the simplicity, the app need some love but is way more better than Feddly. The thing I don't like about Digg Reader is the Digg part, I only want my lovely curated RSS feeds. Also try NewsBlur, Feedreader, The Old Reader and Newsvibe but Digg Reader was the best for my need…

Feedly's Android app is a mess. I can fiddle with the settings to get it into a usable state, but the default behavior just makes no sense (and it's not good after the tweaking).

The default, so far as I can tell, is to dump every feed together to provide an "all-up" view. That could be okay, but then they layer a terrible card UI on top of it that's completely unintuitive. The top cards are big and generally pixelated (because it zooms in for some inexplicable reason), and it switches to a slightly different view after the first card, again, for no clear reason. I can swipe through the cards and reach the end, where it shows a giant checkmark and the words "Done" and "N reviewed". Reaching that page doesn't actually mean I'm done, though. Nothing is actually marked read until I go back to the top and tap on each them (or use the "mark all read" option). I'm either completely missing the interaction paradigm they intend or they haven't put much thought into what the interaction paradigm actually is. Maybe the devs all use iPhones and the Android client is an afterthought?

Meanwhile their website is generally okay, but I am completely at a loss for how to mark an item as unread once I've opened it. I should probably look for a different feed aggregator.