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

171–180 of 284 posts

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#171

Post by macintux »

marknutter wrote: post #152
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 find it incredibly convenient not to have to log into drive, gmail, maps, youtube, etc. separately. They all work seamlessly together, and I know I sound like a shill for saying so, but I've had nothing but positive experiences with it.

I see the convenience, but that only works if you're willing to bare your soul to Google. If you want to have one identity for YouTube, a different identity for Gmail, and don't want Google to know where you are via Maps, that becomes much more problematic.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#172

Post by [deleted] »

exodust wrote: post #74
nogridbag wrote: post #47

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…

Yep, it's frustrating. Youtube comments really are hopelessly broken. Re-shares are not good reading. They are written by users for their followers, not for the people on the actual video page. As you said, they have zero value. When I first noticed this way back when Google started publishing re-share comments under the videos, I would reply to those comments with remarks such as "I already knew that; yes I know wha…

[deleted]

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#173

Post by pjc50 »

LLWM wrote: post #91
hyperpallium wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did they need real names anyway? If they build a profile based on your browsing and social graph to show you ads, what does it matter who you actually are, so long as you have those interests? Like a node in a graph being distinguished only by the arcs connecting it.

One factor was an attempt to counter the GIFT ( http://www.penny-arcade.com/S=0/comic/2004/03/19 ) by preventing anonymity.

Well, that not only didn't work (youtube is still terrible) but provided a means for identifying targets for harrasment.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#174

Post by pjc50 »

davidcgl wrote: post #120
frik wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

G+ lost because Google forced G+ to every Google account. Post something to Youtube, you silently created a G+ post. Upload something to Picasa, you silently published the photo to your G+ newsfeed, etc. - quite toxic. And have they learned from their Google Buzz (G+ predecessor)? Nope, same behavior. I have somewhat similar feeling about the upcoming Win10 launch, and in near future a lot normal user will learn the…

G+ wanted to be a rendezvous for all social/sharing activities on Google, and it turned out that many users didn't like it. Would G+ have fared better if it didn't force G+ onto every Google property? Maybe? It's easy to do armchair analysis, but hindsight is 20/20.

No, plenty of people said it would be terrible as soon as it was announced.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#175

Post by dredmorbius »

giovannibajo1 wrote: post #153
mkozlows wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Reader never had many users. Feedly claims to have captured 80% of the Reader userbase when it shut down, and they have 15 million users. That is incredibly small by the standards of social networks, much smaller than even the pessimistic active-user estimates for G+.

I always wonder what would be the active-user count for G++ without YouTube (i.e. every logged in Google user visiting a YouTube page is marked as an active G+ user if she scrolls down the page once).

YouTube is about 40% of public G+ activity as I've measured it. Also Eric Enge, Stone Temple Consulting.

https://www.stonetemple.com/real-numbers-for-the-activity-on...

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#176

Post by marknutter »

macintux wrote: post #171
marknutter wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it incredibly convenient not to have to log into drive, gmail, maps, youtube, etc. separately. They all work seamlessly together, and I know I sound like a shill for saying so, but I've had nothing but positive experiences with it.

I see the convenience, but that only works if you're willing to bare your soul to Google. If you want to have one identity for YouTube, a different identity for Gmail, and don't want Google to know where you are via Maps, that becomes much more problematic.

I wouldn't quite say I've "bared my soul to Google". I slowly signed up for those services as they became available and now I only have to login to one of them to use them all. If I don't want Google to know about me for something I just open an incognito tab.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#177

Post by justincormack »

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…

One account? Well three or four actually. Was hard to just have one with multiple work accounts and private ones.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#178

Post by AndrewDucker »

ankushnarula wrote: post #164
Twirrim wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides that, the other most significant thing was the lack of open API for it. They fail to understand that people at the time wanted to consume it in their own way (and still do, to some extent). At the time G+ came to exist people loved it. They wanted the conversations like that. They liked the circles idea (at the time Twitter didn't have lists or any such concept), and it's still better than what the other soci…

Yes - the lack of G+ API was a big mistake not just for consumption but also for publication. However, both Twitter and FB had lists long before G+ was even a thing. Twitter has done little/nothing to promote the list functionality other than to increase the 500 member limit on lists. FB went head to head with G+ Circles by enhancing the FB list functionality to include standard lists and school/workplace lists.

Yup.

I wasn't going to stop posting on FB, and I wasn't going to write everything multiple times.

Being able to feed from FB to G+ would have at least meant I could be active on both sites. As it was I had to pick one, and FB had a lot more of my friends on it.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#179

Post by smtddr »

marssaxman wrote: post #154
Pxtl wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People are replying to users but the reply username doesn't match the display username. To be fair, Twitter suffers from this too.

Maybe that's part of the reason I can never figure out what's going on when I follow someone's link to a conversation on Twitter.

This is the bane of my existence when it comes to Twitter.

Why are you even allowed to have 2 names anyway? The real one(the one in your url,.e.g. twitter.com/) and that $WHATEVER_STRING_YOU_WANT username?

Idea, someone make an extension/greasemonkey that replaces all the free-form usernames with the actual account name so I can follow conversations without having to deal with all the mental bookkeeping of 2 names per user in conversational thread.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#180

Post by gonehome »

azernik wrote: post #165
gonehome wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Both Facebook and YouTube comments support threaded replies, but people tend not to use them. Either just a UI issue (the reply button is not highlighted) or a deeper structural issue (people know that top-level comments won't be reordered, so they think the conversation will still be readable) or a prestige issue (both YouTube and Facebook collapse all replies to top-level comments by default, making it MUCH less li…

I think FB is different since it's a much smaller set of people and the replies go from the oldest down to the newest.

There also tend to be fewer comments (it's easy to see who is replying to who) so threading is typically not necessary on FB.

Post reply on HN