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

261–270 of 284 posts

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#261

Post by RegW »

ldng wrote: post #104
School-Cotton wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you from Europe, out of curiosity? Anecdotally that seems to be way more common there than in the U.S., for some reason.

I think we European might care a bit more about our privacy. Just a bit, not that much more, but a bit. That way you're less "discoverable" by a complete stranger. I guess it's cultural. And I'm pretty sure that if FB tried to enforce real name in Europe they would loose quite a lot of accounts.

FB do try. I took me several attempts to create an account with an obviously bogus name. In the end I had to share a name with 312 other bogus people.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#262

Post by RegW »

blakeyrat wrote: post #145
darklajid wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I administer 2 non-profit domains that use google services. When google started randomly merging all my email/youtube/blogger/appEngine/googledocs accounts together I got into a right gtempaccount.com pickle.

I thought I had it all sorted out, and started using separate browsers for each account. However, the company I work for have now decided to use gmail - so I'm back to having to clear my cookies all the time, and keep getting that "New sign-in from Chrome/Firefox on Window" spam.

Hmm - I wonder if this is also hurting their corporate customers?

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#263

Post by RegW »

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:…

> Has Google's search improved since the launch of Facebook?

Hmm - don't know, but I can tell that https://duckduckgo.com has.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#264

Post by mcv »

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…

Google+ is really its own thing, and very valuable as such, but Google keeps trying to make it into something it's not.

You see Google+ interaction where you expect simple comments. I often see Youtube comments in Google+ threads because the thread happened to start with a video, and therefore automatically becomes a Youtube comment for barely literate Youtubers to spit their bile at. Or I see a G+er accidentally post a Youtube comment as a nonsensical G+ post.

Google tries to treat everything the same, but they need to recognize that different things are different things. I don't want my G+ stuff on Youtube, and I don't want Youtube stuff on G+. You don't want G+ reshares in the article's comment section.

I'm glad they finally seem to be coming to their senses. Would have been nice if that'd happened a few years earlier.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#265

Post by mcv »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #39
mkozlows wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook has, and has long had, a real name policy. If you want a reason why Facebook succeeded and G+ didn't, you'll need something that's actually different between them.

What you post on Facebook, however, is not visible to the public unless you explicitly make it so. There's a world of difference between what John Smith writes on his Facebook wall and is visible to only people whom John Smith has explicitly deemed to be friends of John Smith, vs. a public Youtube comment that was once authored by user LordofPants, but thanks to G+ real name policy is now known to the public world as…

On Google+ you have always been able to choose whether to share publicly or only to specific circles.

And the Youtube integration was also the immediate end of the real-name policy (which was really more an "no unusual name policy, because people got blocked for having an unusual real name, whereas plausible pseudonyms were left alone).

But you're right; it was a stupid policy, and they should have known that right from the start.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#266

Post by mcv »

dredmorbius wrote: post #230
InclinedPlane wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still miss usenet. It's a shame that we still haven't improved on comment systems despite decades of technological advancement.

I've spent a fair bit of time reflecting on it. I don't think it would work if resurrected: 1. Usenet was small . Somewhere between 50k and 500k users, based on my own and Gene Spafford's guestimates. More solid numbers appreciated (~1988-1992 or so). 2. It was selective . You had to be a student at a research university, or work for a tech company, or have government access, or be able to gain access to systems prov…

Point 2 was only true before 1993. After that, everybody could get on usenet. And did. The eternal september drove the quality down quite a bit.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#267

Post by mcv »

reagency wrote: post #195
Pxtl wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is a single-purpose social network. It stands alone. Plus is a social platform providing a glue-layer between all the social aspects of Google's services. When you're providing a platform, you can't afford to be opinionated.

Facebook supports messaging, event calendars, photo and videos, blogs (Pages), business listings, geo checkins, a social app platform, and a web identity service.... How is that different in kind from what Google offers to consumers? Google also offers binary blob data storage/sync, and a phone OS. Is that key?

Facebook offers all those things as part of Facebook.

Google offered a lot of totally unrelated things, from a phone OS to a video site, a search engine, and a social network which did incorporate some stuff on its own (hangouts and photos were well integrated and not really a problem as far as I can tell).

Suddenly introducing connections across all those different sites, so your mail contacts end up on your phone, your Youtube posts on Google+, and identities that you want to keep separate get merged against your will, that is stupid, harmful and a betrayal of their users.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#268

Post by mcv »

colbyh wrote: post #4

Though not the end of G+, hopefully it will be the end of G+ as we know it. From day one G+ should have simply been a social mesh between the many (very) popular Google properties like YouTube, Play, Maps, etc. Making it a standalone application was their fatal mistake, and here's hoping Bradley can lead them towards becoming a social utility instead of a social platform.

WTF? It's the exact opposite. Google+ as a standalone social network is fine. In fact, it's fantastic; far better and more usable than Facebook or Twitter. It's the integration with all the other stuff that's turning it into a mess.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#269

Post by mcv »

Aloha wrote: post #69
eevilspock wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is them finally admitting they were being evil. They put their empire and monopoly ambitions (defeat Facebook and dominate social networking as they do search and ads) ahead of the actual interests of their users.

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."

But Google+ users told them that right from the start. We have been complaining about them messing up Google+ immediately when they introduced the "no unusual name" policy, or when they integrated Youtube. We've asked for something like Collections since the very first months of Google+'s existence.

If they thought it was great, it was because they weren't listening to user feedback.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#270

Post by mcv »

TillE wrote: post #33
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #13

A surprisingly large number of FOSS developers (though mostly Linux developers in particular) use G+ and post interesting status updates on it. That's the extent to which I care about it.

Also tabletop RPG people for some reason. It's a quick substitute for a blog, with better comment support than Tumblr.

It's the best RPG community on the internet. There's also a lot of political discussion, science/tech discussion, and it seems to be popular with photographers and various game developers.

Google+ is being used by a lot of really interesting people with cool interests. The quality of content is very high. Well, it was, until Youtube got hooked into it.

And all that in a very freeform manner, in a way that makes it easy to find people with similar interests. To me, it's the closest thing to usenet since usenet.

Post reply on HN