Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

blog.google

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 733 posts

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#191

Post by FeloniousHam »

Apocryphon wrote: post #148
mindcrime wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're shutting it down precisely because no one was depending on it. How would anyone depend on a social network without any users? It did have users. I have no idea the exact number, and clearly it wasn't as many as Facebook, but it wasn't the ghost town people always made it out to be. Some of the Communities were actually quite active.

Where are these Communities, exactly?

In my case, many old school RPG communities are active on Google+. I think its anti-social nature is a feature not a bug.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#193

Post by tomjen3 »

cronz wrote: post #41
_uhtu wrote: post #6

Google+ had terrible marketing and release, but it had some decent ideas that I wish other networks had carried over. The idea of "circles", where you had a circle for "acquaintances" "friends", "family" would be great on, say, Facebook, as it would allow me to filter down my feed to just the people I really care about but still have a connection to more distance acquaintances. Currently on Facebook the news feed is…

The idea of circles sounds fantastic on paper but it's simply too much work for the common user. For most of the posts users would make, users would probably spend more time thinking about which circles to enable than actually writing the post. It's a headache and it leads to a poor experience, it feels like a hurdle, something you must do; it makes posting less natural. Facebook on the other hand offers the same fun…

I can see the argument regard engagement, but honestly you probably should take at least as long to think about your intended audience as you should posting your birthday picture.

Heck I wish Facebook forced you to provide at least one tag with each post, just so that we could unfollow e.g baby posts/political posts and then maybe get something useful out of Facebook (my current solution is to unfollow the annoying person, but that is a bit too crude).

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#194

Post by stan_rogers »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #72

Google+ was a top-down, scrambling response to Facebook's meteoric rise. I think it ultimately failed because it didn't naturally mesh with or arise from Google's natural strengths. Google has always had amazing scientists and engineers working for them, but building a new social network requires less math/science and more of a human focus. (Of course, Facebook's data centers and ops are now the 6th wonder of the tec…

It failed in my case because it polluted every other Google property - search, YouTube suggestions, etc. I'd prefer that suggestions and search results be based on my preferences and not those of an idiot cousin or a foaming-at-the-mouth prepper I happen to work with.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#195

Post by gojomo »

justicezyx wrote: post #168
cletus wrote: post #99

This is Vic Gundotra's legacy and perhaps the first major strategic decision Larry Page made in the post-Eric Schmidt era and it was the design and launch of Google+ and (IMHO) it marked a turning point in the company's culture. Internal resistance to aspects of G+ was enormous. People outside the company get this idea that Google acts as some kind of singleminded (possibly nefarious) entity when "herding cats" is so…

Not relevant, but "the fish rots from the head" is relevant to Chinese? I cannot find any explanation of that connection. Just curious.

When I search Google for [fish rots from head], the top 3 results each mention some Chinese connection – one calls it a "Chinese proverb", others say it's been variously attributed to many traditions, often Turkish, Greek, or Chinese.

(So: maybe that's an origin. Or perhaps there's something vaguely similar in some Chinese traditions. Or perhaps it's just a common mal-attribution, as there's a tendency in the west to ascribe various highly-figurative or riddle-like pearls of wisdom to "the Chinese", or "the Arabs", or "the Buddhists", etc.)

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#196

Post by acdha »

badloginagain wrote: post #84

I wonder what G+ could have done to pivot after its terrible release. They had some good ideas, and usually Google takes those good ideas of a failed product and rolls it into successful products. Remember Google Wave, where you could work on a document _at the same time_? Something like the automatic generation of circles in Google Mail, and integrate some kind of generalized wall posts for Google Mail users.

Put a UX team on it with firing authority up to the management level. I deleted my account due to the “ is following you” push & web notification spam which could not be disabled for the first year or so – I heard so many people complaining about that. They had similar problems with sharing where a popular story would be all you saw as it was one entry per person sharing it.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#197

Post by [deleted] »

frereubu wrote: post #171
coldtea wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For most of the posts users would make, users would probably spend more time thinking about which circles to enable than actually writing the post. It's a headache and it leads to a poor experience, it feels like a hurdle, something you must do; it makes posting less natural. How low have we got, capacity wise, when this is even considered "a hurdle"? At one time, people had to walk to the TV to change the channels…

It's because it forces you to pick. Outside of the discrete friendship groups online, there's an ever-shifting on-the-spot calculation about who's around you and how much you want to say. One day you might feel like telling friend X while you're in the coffee shop together with just one other friend, the next day you might not feel so open in the bar for a variety of reasons. Add in all the variables about who else i…

[deleted]

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#198

Post by 0xCMP »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #48
Chunkyated wrote: post #23

oh no. My family have used G+ to share stuff. I don't want to have my mother-in-law on facebook, what else can we use? I really like the idea of circles, some stuff I would share only with my close family, other stuff would be shared with wider family and friends, etc.

Facebook has that feature now too, it's called "friend lists". Unfortunately it's a much less prominent feature and harder to use.

And it's also being removed soon.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#199

Post by p49k »

sctb wrote: post #93

Related discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18169027 . Edit: here are some other articles providing coverage: https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/8/17951914/google-plus-data... https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/08/google-reportedly-exposed-pr... https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/08/google-plus-hack/ https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45792349 https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/google-plus-shut-down-... htt…

This is not a news article, though - it's a one-sided PR piece that greatly minimizes important points about the story and completely ignores other points (e.g. the regulation angle). You should have let another news story take its spot; there are plenty others that are not paywalled.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#200

Post by lucb1e »

oculusthrift wrote: post #179
ilovecaching wrote: post #149

What's really striking about this to me is that Google didn't disclose the security vulnerability. Google is trying to cover it up by moving the ball from 'there was a breach' to 'we're shutting down G+'. This is why I'm super hesitant to be a Google fanboy. Facebook may have my social media info, but Google has my emails, all of my mobile data, access to a bunch of my assets through Google Domains, GCE etc. Scary st…

Sadly the strategy is working. not seeing much mention of breach on HN

I must have skimmed over it in the article, I only know because it's in the comments. That should have been the headline, imo. Own up to it like other vendors do. I thought Google was good with security, this is a good way to get one of the few positive points about this monolith changed.
Post reply on HN