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Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

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Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#121

Post by yuhong »

ww520 wrote: post #94
inthewoods wrote: post #69

Vic did a pretty great job getting Google+ in decent shape, but am I the only one that finds the overall strategy among these properties confusing? I know that whenever I talk with a normal, non-tech civilian they are always confused by the service. They have Youtube (where you can upload videos), Google+ Photos (where you can upload videos and stream as well), Google Drive (where you can also upload pictures and vid…

Google+ became just like .Net of Microsoft. It's a umbrella for a number of confusing services forced together. Depending on whom to talk to and the favorite of the month, it can be different things. It was social connect before. Now it's unified login. Next it's going to be whatever. Sounds awfully like .Net in the old days.

I think Vic formerly worked on .NET at Microsoft in fact.

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#122

Post by sjs382 »

saidajigumi wrote: post #34

> Former CEO Eric Schmidt admitted in an interview at the D conference in 2011 that he missed the boat on the rise of identity on the Internet. > “I clearly knew that I had to do something, and I failed to do it,” he said. “A CEO should take responsibility. I screwed up.” I think Eric screwed up in a deeper way that this quote admits. Google+ came up at a time of broader dissatisfaction with other social networks, pa…

For me, the number one problem of Google+ was that many who were excited to try it, couldn't (for over a year, if I recall?). We were a 2nd-class-citizens with a Google Apps account, rather than a Gmail account.

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#123

Post by [deleted] »

hangonhn wrote: post #91
yid wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And _all_ of that interest was shot dead due to attempts to own identity by enforcing the use of real names[1]. It was an understandable, safe, and wrong decision at the time. Facebook's commercial power was widely attributed to the fact that for the first time, wide swaths of people were using their real identity online. With the investment that Google put into +, the risk of having another sea of MetalHead444s wa…

"It was an understandable, safe, and wrong decision at the time." That's such a good way to describe a bad decision. The accumulation of decisions with those characteristics will sink any company.

[deleted]

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#124

Post by mathattack »

“I’m also forever in debt to the Google+ team. This is a group of people who built social at Google against the skepticism of so many.”

Seems like the skeptics were right, no? And this is coming from a big fan of Google. Great company, but this didn't work out. Interesting that they give Vic credit for Circles. I thought it was someone else's idea, no? Great idea, they just didn't follow up on it.

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#125

Post by timothya »

sjs382 wrote: post #122
saidajigumi wrote: post #34

> Former CEO Eric Schmidt admitted in an interview at the D conference in 2011 that he missed the boat on the rise of identity on the Internet. > “I clearly knew that I had to do something, and I failed to do it,” he said. “A CEO should take responsibility. I screwed up.” I think Eric screwed up in a deeper way that this quote admits. Google+ came up at a time of broader dissatisfaction with other social networks, pa…

For me, the number one problem of Google+ was that many who were excited to try it, couldn't (for over a year, if I recall?). We were a 2nd-class-citizens with a Google Apps account, rather than a Gmail account.

It was in the invite-only stage for less than 3 months.

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#126

Post by Curmudgel »

guelo wrote: post #113
aasarava wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're definitely not the only one. Trying to understand the interaction between the various Google properties makes me feel like an idiot -- and yet I'm a Web developer with a CS degree who has been using the Web just about every day since 1994. For example, have you ever tried to schedule a Google Hangout chat? As far as I can tell, there's no way to do it from Google Hangouts. You need to first sign in to Google+,…

I feel that Google made better, more usable interfaces before they were taken over by designers. Modern designers are obsessed with removing features because that's the Apple religion. The new Maps is ruined because of this. Larry should fire all their designers and let engineers take over the interfaces again.

I agree. I can't stand the low contrast gray typefaces, the new zoom buttons that replace the slider, the obnoxious, hyperactive search bar and the inability to rotate the map view (which should be trivial).

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#127

Post by mynewwork »

npizzolato wrote: post #96
daeken wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also think the real name policy is one of those things that we give too much weight too in analyzing the service. Lacking pseudonyms is not the reason "average" people have not used it. I don't think that anyone will argue that pseudonyms are important to the average user. However, they are important to a small but influential group of users. The type of early adopter that otherwise could've driven G+ upward.

I'll concede they're a small but loud group of users. I'm not convinced the type of people who will refuse to use a service because of a lack of pseudonyms are necessarily influential. I would attribute Google+'s failures much more to their abysmal launch strategy, which massively restricted otherwise-excited users from ever joining Google+ until it became a barren wasteland.

But, Google+ showed that they were incredibly influential. The real-name policy was the primary narrative about Google+. Feminist bloggers complained it would expose women to stalkers and abusive ex's. Journalists wrote about the underlying racism of the algorithm assuming Anglo-Saxon naming conventions and highlighted people barred from the service for having names from a different ethnic or cultural background. Techies wrote about privacy and big brother.

The end result was every article about Google+ carried with it some form of controversy, negativity or problem. Joe average might not care about the real name policy at first, but they do care when they're told it's broken, sexist, racist and dangerous.

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#128

Post by bane »

inthewoods wrote: post #76
bane wrote: post #56

IMHO Google+'s principle problem is that it's multiple efforts all under the same name umbrella. This is confusing to users and seems to have been confusing to Google. It's a longer-than-twitter public broadcast messaging system/social network/photo sharing/single sign-on/half a dozen other things. There's some great ideas in there. Having a subscription style feed of people I want to follow, and their long-form post…

Circles seems like a good idea - but I find I don't use them.

I would use them more if I could assert a different identity/profile for each one.

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#129

Post by bpyne »

zippergz wrote: post #65
saidajigumi wrote: post #34

> Former CEO Eric Schmidt admitted in an interview at the D conference in 2011 that he missed the boat on the rise of identity on the Internet. > “I clearly knew that I had to do something, and I failed to do it,” he said. “A CEO should take responsibility. I screwed up.” I think Eric screwed up in a deeper way that this quote admits. Google+ came up at a time of broader dissatisfaction with other social networks, pa…

My experience is that the Real Names policy was hated by a small but vocal and influential group of users. I never heard about it from any of my friends who aren't reading sites like HN. Those people still don't use Google+, but it's because none of their friends were there, they found Circles confusing, and they didn't see any real benefit to taking the effort to learn about it. Social networks have a lot of inertia…

The Real Names policy stinks. It misses completely legitimate (and innocent) reasons why people want to be anonymous sometimes.

That said, your other point needs to be trumpeted to any companies thinking about taking a run at FB. The reality is that FB has its annoyances, but overall it is good enough that it's not worth losing all my posts, photos, etc. that have become a "life mosaic", as well as, my network of friends to move to another site - and I don't have time to maintain more than one social network. The situation reminds me of enterprise vendor apps that my employer uses. Overall a particular app may have its warts, but it covers most use cases alright so that we aren't tempted to go to a competing app.

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#130

Post by npizzolato »

timothya wrote: post #125
sjs382 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, the number one problem of Google+ was that many who were excited to try it, couldn't (for over a year, if I recall?). We were a 2nd-class-citizens with a Google Apps account, rather than a Gmail account.

It was in the invite-only stage for less than 3 months.

You say that like it's a short amount of time. Three months is more than enough time for hype to build, peek, and wither, which can -- and did, I would agrue -- kill a social network.
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