Live data from Hacker News

Using Google without a Google+ profile

googleblog.blogspot.com

141–150 of 284 posts

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#141
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with a profile that spans unrelated services is that your persona on one shouldn't necessarily be tied to your persona on another; Google Accounts with different public-facing per-service personas are okay in a way that a single public-facing persona spanning all services isn't. G+ tried to solve this with Circles, but as far as I can tell, everything related to YouTube was assumed to be public on G+ be…

That's an interesting read, but I fail to see how it has anything to do with Google+.

Google thinks it knows how people's social "circles" interact. But any attempt to make people make "public" G+ posts just because content is public elsewhere hits several of the Geek Social Fallacies, notably 4 ("Friendship Is Transitive") and 5 ("Friends Do Everything Together").

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#142

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.

It's broken for me because I uploaded copyrighted clips to YouTube in 2006 with a username. When Google took over and linked my Gmail to YouTube and got serious about copyright, they banned me. So I have the pleasure of being able, as they seem to intend, to use one Google account to navigate all their services, except for one of the most popular because of petty offenses done in the early years of social media.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#143

I find it incredibly amusing and also very frustrating that all the top comments to this article are simply G+ re-shares that add absolutely no value to the comments section and simply more garbage the reader has to sift through in order to view legit comments. >>"Google has been doing some rethinking" thanks I already read that >>"#googleplusupdate #youtube " thank you that was valuable >>[another summary of the art…

To be fair, to take the YouTube comment section, which in the days before G+ was known as the second greatest online cesspool after 4chan, and actually make it worse is an achievement of epic proportions.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#144

It's incredible how lightly they have thrown away the Google+ Account For Everything stance given how merciless they were in imposing it at the time. The wails from YouTube in particular have only just died down. Kudos to them, but a lot of pain could have been avoided if they did all this listening back then, instead of waiting until their thing was clearly dead.

I'm not sure. Admitted, I'm not a fan of Google and maybe a bit grumpy, but I read this blog entry as "Now everyone will need a G+ account, but it won't have a public profile". That said, the distinction between Google account G+ Account Google Profile is lost on me, I'm genuinely confused about the past and present state of these things. It feels like "G+ Accounts" are supposed to be the new "Google Accounts"? Like…

There are certain things that tried to force you to make a G+ page or they wouldn't activate, so maybe that's the main change?

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#145

It's incredible how lightly they have thrown away the Google+ Account For Everything stance given how merciless they were in imposing it at the time. The wails from YouTube in particular have only just died down. Kudos to them, but a lot of pain could have been avoided if they did all this listening back then, instead of waiting until their thing was clearly dead.

I'm not sure. Admitted, I'm not a fan of Google and maybe a bit grumpy, but I read this blog entry as "Now everyone will need a G+ account, but it won't have a public profile". That said, the distinction between Google account G+ Account Google Profile is lost on me, I'm genuinely confused about the past and present state of these things. It feels like "G+ Accounts" are supposed to be the new "Google Accounts"? Like…

You aren't the only one. I have two Gmail addresses, and two YouTube channels.

As far as I can tell, I have FIVE Google+ accounts (there may be more!):

1. Nickname email for friends

2. Real name email for family/jobs

3. A SECOND nickname account that somehow got created when I logged into YouTube one time

4. A SECOND real name account that somehow got created when I logged into YouTube some other time

5. The YouTube channel I shared with a friend, which has a Gmail account but inexplicably is only a single Google+ account unlike the two listed above

I honestly have no idea why 3 & 4 exist. They seem to have gotten created at some point for some reason I never understood.

In my eyes, the biggest problems with Google+ are:

* It's CONFUSING AS HECK. Just figuring out what an account is, or why it got created, is way more effort than I care about

* Their integration with YouTube was ridiculously not thought-out. Not in ANY way. They somehow seemed to think there was a 1:1 relationship users -> channels, when in reality it's a many:many relationship. Why did they think that? Why didn't anybody say, "uh, guys? A person can have more than one YouTube channel. And two people or more can run a single YouTube channel."

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#147

I find it incredibly amusing and also very frustrating that all the top comments to this article are simply G+ re-shares that add absolutely no value to the comments section and simply more garbage the reader has to sift through in order to view legit comments. >>"Google has been doing some rethinking" thanks I already read that >>"#googleplusupdate #youtube " thank you that was valuable >>[another summary of the art…

The reply thing really gets me - reddit and HN threads are really easy to follow. Why is that so hard to do?

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#149

I find it incredibly amusing and also very frustrating that all the top comments to this article are simply G+ re-shares that add absolutely no value to the comments section and simply more garbage the reader has to sift through in order to view legit comments. >>"Google has been doing some rethinking" thanks I already read that >>"#googleplusupdate #youtube " thank you that was valuable >>[another summary of the art…

I highly recommend using Alien Tube [0]. It fetches reddit comments for the video, it's really well done. If it finds nothing, it displays the orignal YouTube comments.

[0] https://alientube.co/

Post reply on HN