Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Using Google without a Google+ profile

googleblog.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 284 posts

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#131

Post by callesgg »

eevilspock wrote: post #93
Aloha wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this as them admitting "hey, we tried to bring our users we thought was something really great, as it turns out, they didn't agree with us so much, so now we're not going to do that anymore."

That's very generous of you. You can continue to believe that, or see that Google+ is a reaction to: - Facebook surpasses Google for proportion of users’ time , http://businessetc.thejournal.ie/facebook-surpasses-google-f... - Facebook surpasses Google as most visited site in US , http://www.livemint.com/Industry/ct3JSccQisManKjJ6qt43N/Face... - Prediction: Facebook Will Surpass Google In Advertising Revenues , http:…

It has certainly become better, however that does not matter to much as they gave the best results even before all of that.

There used to be a time where i quite often had to check a few pages back and rephrase the search, These days whatever i search for the thing that i want i generally at the 3 position (1. being an ad. 2. is for some reason most often useless )

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#132

Post by fluidcruft »

Zikes wrote: post #61
theseatoms wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's funny, because I've been thinking, "They already know so much already anyway." Probably how they were hoping/expecting people would act.

I'm an Android user, they can already see my contacts, thus they can already deduce who I know. As someone on the internet, they can already crawl any publicly available data about me, including blog posts, tweets, forum posts, mailing list emails, and social network metadata like marital status, gender, etc. Google+, in theory, doesn't really tell them they don't already know, or can't easily figure out already, so…

The difference is that Google+ seemed to go from a passive mostly private "collecting information about you so we can target ads" mode, to an intrusive "we're applying value judgments to you" and "broadcasting information about you to others" mode. It was just scary to do anything with them without researching the fuck out of every button press (and getting unclear and contradicting answers about what was going to happen).

Lot's of flowery, content-less, lovey-dovey text on their landing pages explaining why you have to do XYZ and what the implications are, that then never were exactly what I understood them to be. It only takes being confused once to stop giving a shit what they are writing and never trusting them again. Whenever I read anything from them now, I always think they are sugar coating some new pain they've decided to inflict.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#133

Post by colinbartlett »

silverbax88 wrote: post #85
legohead wrote: post #79

This is confusing to me. What IS a "Google Account"? Is it my gmail? That makes no sense to me, it's an email service. A "Google Account" sounds like I work at Google. If you were to tell me I had a "Google Account", I would assume it's Google+. Google messed up when it tried to make some master account with Google+. Maybe everything could be incorporated into one account, but the way they've done it is one of the mo…

I wish they would just get it right, and let me create different accounts for the apps I want to use. I just want a YouTube account. No Gmail. No G+. No tying my adwords account to anything else unless I request it. This is extremely simple, and Google has made this horribly invasive and it's flat out broken at this point.

But we all know why they forced the unification of these accounts. So they can correlate our activity across services to "better serve us". (Read: serve us ads.)

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#134

Post by djent »

danso wrote: post #2

The OP links to a corresponding YouTube blog post with more specifics about how the G+ rollback affects the YouTube service (as of today, YouTube comments will only show up on YouTube, and not on G+, and vice-versa): http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2015/07/youtube-comments.... It also mentions improvements to the ranking system "that reduces the visibility of junk comments. It’s working—the rate of dislikes on com…

Ever since they integrated G+ with YouTube comments, I thought that the comment dislike button was just a placebo. I've never actually seen the score of a comment go down upon it being pressed. Has it actually been working the whole time?

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#135

Post by Swizec »

lmm wrote: post #107
greggman wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be right but Facebook succeeded dispite the exact same real name policy. It's hard to look at Facebook's success with that policy and then claim it was obvious google would fail with it. The better question is why did Facebook get away with it?

That wasn't Facebook's policy. Facebook removed fake name accounts when users complained , but "The Friendly Monster" was around my university for a good six months, and a friend with a less obvious fake name has kept her account to this day. Google+ aggressively and preemptively went after fake names, and even caught some real names by mistake.

Funnily, I have been using my fake name on Google and on Facebook ever since about 2008/2009. So far nobody has caught on or deleted my account.

To make matters more fun, I use my fake name more often online and in real life than I do the name on my ID. Reality is funny that way.

Yes, I'm an outlier.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#137

Post by rudolf0 »

lmm wrote: post #106
alwaysdoit wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, it's not like YouTube comments were ever working well.

They were never great but they were better before.

If by "before" you mean 2008, then yes, arguably. Starting around 2009 I've started using various browser extensions to hide the comments, and I've never been happier.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#139

Post by higherpurpose »

legohead wrote: post #79

This is confusing to me. What IS a "Google Account"? Is it my gmail? That makes no sense to me, it's an email service. A "Google Account" sounds like I work at Google. If you were to tell me I had a "Google Account", I would assume it's Google+. Google messed up when it tried to make some master account with Google+. Maybe everything could be incorporated into one account, but the way they've done it is one of the mo…

Honestly, the whole account "integration" just pisses me off. I want my Gmail account to be separated from my Youtube account and from the Maps account.

The main reason (by far) Google unified them is so they they can more easily track everyone across multiple properties.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#140

Post by skynetv2 »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #36
pachydermic wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh I'm not sure about that. I think the real problem is that it was clunky and made people mess with something that they had no interest in using. It was a weirdly forcing move which reminded everyone how much power Google wields in this kind of user/company relationship. People are probably generally okay with how that works, but only if they aren't made painfully aware of it (kind of like DRM - just look at Steam f…

Right. If they'd made it an option to tie together all of your accounts and combine activity across everything , some people would love it and adopt it. But make it mandatory, and even some of the people who might otherwise like it will reject it just because they're being forced.

my youtube username is exactly the same as my real name but I refuse to let youtube show my "real name". never caved in.
Post reply on HN