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Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

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Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#181

Post by inthewoods »

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…

Right on - for me, it is that they could not make the fundamental decision of whether or not Google+ was a place or connective tissue between places. I can only guess, but it seems to me like a reaction to Facebook - they felt the need to differentiate from them and thus created this awkward construct. As I mentioned above, I think the winning strategy would have been to define Google+ as a place - the place to share stuff from all your other Google apps/sites really easily - basically create a feed of all your stuff from across the Google universe.

They've got some of it, but it doesn't quite work (for me at least) because of small gaps - like the fact that Chromecast works with Youtube, but not with Google+ Photos - thus in order to use Chromecast to display the wonderful video I just took, I have to essentially download it and reupload it to Youtube. Google+ Photos likely leverages the same tech as Youtube, but they're clearly being developed separately and that just seems silly.

Other people have put the fault on designers - to me this is a failure of product management and ultimately management to pull together the various forces that I'm sure exist within Google. And I don't think that was easy and that's why I say that Vic has some measure of success.

Google+ is, for me, almost really good - but it falls down in enough places that I would consider switching, for instance, if Dropbox came up with a full office suite to match Google Drive (which they seem to be working on).

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#182

Post by malyk »

amaks wrote: post #102
inthewoods wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I personally use them a lot. For example, I share immediate family-related photos and posts with the Family circle, general family stuff with the Extended Family, some stuff with Friends, some with Colleagues. It's useful and powerful feature, but requires skills similar to the email Inbox organization which some people seem to find too hard.

It's not that it's too hard, it's just not something I want to worry about. I think some people like to really organize things and some see it as a hassle.

For myself my inbox has essentially two folders. Inbox and Archived. My facebook lists is just friends and my google plus circles is just whatever the default is.

I don't want to think about who I'm sharing things with. I either share it with everyone on a social network or send it as an email to specific people.

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#183

Post by magicalist »

wtbob wrote: post #170
magicalist wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome sync (including passwords) can all be encrypted on the client. Just go to settings -> Advanced sync settings -> "Encrypt all synced data with your own sync passphrase". Also, if you're this worried, you really owe it to yourself to put in a little effort on your email. Email is often not transmitted in the clear, especially if you're using gmail already, and if you would just switch to a desktop client and IMA…

I'm aware of the Chrome sync passphrase. If I used Chrome on Android (I don't—I use Firefox), would Chrome back my passphrase up to Google's systems? I dunno. Is the crypto behind Chrome's sync anywhere near as good as that behind Firefox's? Not last time I looked. I'm also aware that email often travels via SSL—but it's always cleartext to the sending and receiving hosts. I don't see that I'm suffering an especial r…

> I'm aware of the Chrome sync passphrase. If I used Chrome on Android (I don't—I use Firefox), would Chrome back my passphrase up to Google's systems? I dunno.

At least the docs claim that it's only saved on your device. You can believe it or not. There may be a way to verify that it's not being backed up with your normal Android data, but I'm not sure.

> Is the crypto behind Chrome's sync anywhere near as good as that behind Firefox's? Not last time I looked.

It's never been not good. Maybe you're thinking of back when they didn't have the option to encrypt all your sync data locally, just your passwords? It uses Nigori[1] and the source is all available[2].

This is a little old, but it compares browser syncing security: http://gregoryszorc.com/blog/2012/04/08/comparing-the-securi...

> I'm also aware that email often travels via SSL—but it's always cleartext to the sending and receiving hosts

Fair enough, but if you're using PGP, those hosts are only the actual sender and recipient (and anyone the recipient shares an email with, of course).

[1] http://www.links.org/files/nigori-overview.pdf

[2] https://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/sync/util/n...

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#184

Post by joeblau »

walshemj wrote: post #167
igorgue wrote: post #37

Sorry if I'm asking a stupid question, but: How come all these "internal memos" always leak? Is it fine to share an internal email without getting in trouble at a public company?

Politics you know the 8th layer of the OSI stack :-) Normally some one has a line they want to run and have their friends in the media to spin stuff to its the same in politics.

I'm laughing so hard at this. I'm definitely stealing this and using this later!

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#185

Post by rogerbinns »

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 gave up on G+ because they kept making it more and more unreadable. Posts ended up being pictures wherever possible. Then they made things go horizontally and vertically in random sized boxes. You could switch to single column mode, but ended up with almost no actual text on the screen - http://www.rogerbinns.com/galleries/From%20Posts/plusunreada... shows in yellow to tiny areas of actual content.

I still don't understand how anyone actually consumes G+ content in non-trivial amounts. The irony is that Google Reader was all about consuming content, but nothing was learned from that.

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#186

Post by dredmorbius »

cookiecaper wrote: post #86
qq66 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real-name policy itself was only known by a small group of people. However, the idea that G+ would be a place for a your One True Identity was directly attacking Facebook, which is not the way in which Facebook was vulnerable. If they had built the entire product (not just the real-name policy) around the idea of pseudonyms or ephemeral identities or multiple identities like Reddit, they may have found more succe…

Google doesn't want to be reddit.

Ironically, Google inherited the precursor of Reddit, in the form of Google Groups, the interface to what's left of Usenet.

It's also done much to kill that -- the interface is abysmal (actually, so is G+, but that's another story). Even some early G+ support channels which were mediated through Google Groups got killed off. I'd posted some detailed feedback early on (2011) which, so far as I can tell, has been nuked from the face of teh Intarwebs.

Reddit isn't the end-all be-all, but it's damned good. And it carries far more regard and respect than its size would suggest. News items I'm reading about G+ discuss a total staff of over 1200 devoted to it (now largely being reassigned). Reddit's still in the And yeah: I'd love to see global search (including comments), better tags, better moderation tools, a more powerful wiki, longer self-posts (10k char limit is a bear), and a bunch of other stuff, but it's really quite a useful site as things stand.

Much as HN, despite a pretty limited UI is, largely based on community and dynamics.

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#187

Post by alttab »

scrame wrote: post #155
kibwen wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never heard about it from any of my friends who aren't > reading sites like HN. Anecdote: a decidedly non-technical friend of mine with the last name of "Star" had his Google+ profile disabled after having his name falsely classified as a pseudonym. The only Google+ service that he actually cared about using was Hangouts (a sentiment universal among my friends, it seems... despite its faults, Hangouts really is b…

Hangouts really is best-in-class as far as I can tell My S4 updated from gtalk to hangouts, and I loathe it. It now crashes quite regularly, sometimes multiple times in a single chat session, and included a stupid button that starts a video chat on my phone, a feature I have never wanted and never will want, but manages to get fat-thumbed, or randomly turn itself on when I am trying to communicate with someone.

I use hangouts on my note 2 and it works great. I don't run a lot of gadgets on my phone though.

I think hangouts killer feature is in the browser.

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#188

Post by dredmorbius »

ams6110 wrote: post #168
zippergz wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't use social media. Facebook, Twitter, the rest of them. So I wasn't ever a likely Google+ user. I do use Google Apps, Sites, and mail however, and what really annoyed me about Google+ and their big "identity" push was the insistence on trying to consolidate three separate Google "identities" together and sort of mush all of those things together. Those identities represent "me" in separate roles and responsibi…

Quite. I even managed to land three top-of-the page HN posts on the same day on that topic: http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1qsnks/dont_loo...

That issue hit quite a nerve, and it's been commented on at length in some of the news discussions. Ron Amadeo at ArsTechnica most especially:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/04/report-google-to-end-...

The social network hasn't gained the massive userbase it would need to rival Facebook, and the aggressive integration strategy has been universally hated by users. As Google gets bigger and bigger, it faces harsher scrutiny, and few things the company has done have been more disliked than Google+. According to the report, Google+'s YouTube takeover was seen as "a rocky move" even inside the company...

As a brand, Google+ is about at toxic as you can get.

Ouch.

As I'd previously commented answering Eric Schmidt's "My biggest mistake at Google was not anticipating social": No, Schmidt, your biggest mistake was failing to realize that vast hoards of highly detailed and categorized personal data are not only an asset, but a tremendous liability.

http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1u356d/schmidt_...

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#189

Post by alttab »

zmmmmm wrote: post #169
cookiecaper wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google doesn't want to be reddit.

But therein lies the problem: people clearly want Reddit. Companies succeed when they find a significant niche where their interests happen to align with that of their users / customers in a significant way. When a company starts putting its own needs ahead of its users that's a huge danger sign for its future. Google arrogantly thought that they could put their own needs first and if they just shove it hard enough a…

Maybe it didn't topple facebook, but what other data do they have from it? Is searching this information fruitful in interesting ways? It might be.

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#190

Post by dredmorbius »

Eric Schmidt said in a December 30, 2013 Engaget interview "my biggest mistake at Google was not anticipating social".

My response at the time: No, Schmidt, your biggest mistake was failing to realize that vast hoards of highly detailed and categorized personal data are not only an asset, but a tremendous liability.

Or as I put it: "Schmidt: My biggest mistake is still not realizing my biggest mistake"

http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1u356d/schmidt_...

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