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

Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself

gigaom.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 242 posts

Re: Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself

#221

Post by desas »

schuke wrote: post #162
fakeer wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am from India and so I grew up on British English and have stuck to that. I was gifted a Oxford Pocket Dictionary when I was a kid, by an uncle. I practically learned my English with that dictionary, had it till recently when I passed it down to my niece(who is in 5th grade as of now). Now, you'll have to trust me on these two statements: 1. I did learn " sth 'can' be used for something " from that old good little…

Same here in China. I grew up learning English using mostly British textbooks and sth is introduced to us quite early, pretty much like xyz in algebra. I'm actually quite surprised to find out it's perhaps not that common in the US.

I grew up in England learning English. sth is not very common here either.

Re: Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself

#222

Post by stcredzero »

ktsmith wrote: post #67
smithzvk wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There will definitely be a second exodus. People such as myself are waiting to see what "wins out" over the next few months. I'm still adding feeds to my Reader account.

I'm still using reader because I don't care for feedly working as an extension to my browser and the news blur interface doesn't appeal to me. I'm waiting to see if something else pops up that offers the syncing feature of reader with a decent web app.

I agree. I'll also add that TheOldReader is a bit of a pain to add to. You have to search for your feed in another window, then find the RSS or Atom link, then manually copy link to add it as a subscription. That's a lot of stepa. Also, I used their import queue, and nothing has happened for days.

Re: Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself

#223

Post by mbreese »

whatprojectnext wrote: post #210
czr80 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true as the reason, but I cannot believe they could misjudge the importance of Reader to its users - they have all the logs and know exactly what the usage is. They just decided they didn't care enough, and could accept the negative publicity.

Maybe they did look at the logs and decided that Reader usage was low enough (at Google scale) that they did not care.

At the very least, by looking at raw numbers, usage probably was pretty low. But the people that used it, used it a lot. I think that they just wanted to get rid of a project that they couldn't maintain anymore and sorely misjudged how vocal the users of it would be.

Re: Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself

#224

Post by fluidcruft »

joedevon wrote: post #178
jseims wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm building something on top of Hangouts, and I had an exchange that this reminded me of. I was finally connected with a developer evangelist, and I sent an email saying something like "would love to know more about Google's strategic goals with Hangouts". Her response was "I'm sure you're aware that Google doesn't discuss its strategies outside the company". What a striking cultural difference from startups, where…

Google doesn't want anyone to know what they're up to. Ironically, they want to know EVERYTHING about what YOU are up to.

Except apparently which blogs you're reading. But I guess they get that and more from Chrome now.

Re: Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself

#225

Post by nchlswu »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #11
ghshephard wrote: post #2

My favorite comment from the post: "And by the way – how is this app strategic for you guys and Reader is not? A little clarity would certainly be appreciated." I too would love to know what Google is thinking here.

It ties into Google Now. It's already super convenient for me. Swipe up "Google, note to self, pick up milk". Now I have a TODO. Combine that with what Google already knows (that I leave work at 5 and drive within half a mile of a grocery store), think about the intelligence they could bring to my Todo list. (I know lots of people aren't going to like the privacy implications, my comment isn't meant to apologize or t…

It baffles me that everyone is so focused on Evernote when the connection is so obvious (probably deceptively so)

Re: Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself

#226

Post by cliffu »

tadfisher wrote: post #125
donall wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent observation is really on the money. Hyperlocal recommendations are very interesting, but _paid_ recommendations are a potential gold mine that I think people are only now starting to catch on to. What I find particularly interesting about it is the potential to produce genuinely relevant advertising. As a simple example, imagine I ask my smartphone where I can find the nearest fast food joint and it tells…

For things like that, such a service makes complete sense. But for things that I spend real money on, I've already developed a filter in my brain to weed out anything that looks like paid shilling. This is why I stopped using Google Shopping after it went paid-only, and why I skip the first page of Google Search when researching products. Now if they could make this a social thing, where real, authenticated, non-paid…

I find that even for topics related to money the top hits on Google are all completely useless spam. I was looking for information about companies selling software components and just found a bunch of "sellyourappnow.com" offering Fruit Ninja clones for a few hundred bucks.

For whatever reason businesses that love their margins more than their customers find it's much more convenient to astroturf services like Yelp than to actually provide something worth buying.

And services like Yelp always seem to find that it's more lucrative to extort money from businesses in exchange for reorganizing their ratings.

I'd love to have a way for regular people to recommend things that was invulnerable to astroturfing but I have no idea what it would look like.

Re: Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself

#228

Post by km3k »

neolefty wrote: post #214
anigbrowl wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be the Google Now that doesn't run on my Nexus One? :-)

You and me both, browlther. I found a Nexus 7 (thanks, visiting relatives) to go along with my aging Nexus One, and before I even knew what Now was, it figured out my commute (which is by bus, in Chengdu, China), telling me how long it would take that day based on traffic. I was pretty floored, since at that point I thought of the 7 as kind of a toy.

I wish Google Now was that good for me. I've used the same commute since starting to use Google Now months ago, but it keeps telling me to use an alternate route that takes the same time, but has tolls, busier roads and a higher probability of delays. I can't seem to get it to figure out that I won't go that way.

While I can use Google Now on my Galaxy S III, apparently Google doesn't want me using it if I won't do things their way.

Re: Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself

#229

Post by cddotdotslash »

mindcrime wrote: post #137
cddotdotslash wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot Mozilla - pretty much the only company left that supports what you mentioned.

Mozilla is mentioned. :-) End of the first paragraph: Mozilla have a lot of clout on the browser side, but arguably much less so than in years past, as their market share has slipped.

Whoops, completely missed that!

Re: Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself

#230

Post by ChrisLTD »

donniezazen wrote: post #152

It is absurd to expect a business to not to shift its priorities. Google did more harm to RSS technology by letting it deteriorate over years. Now that it's gone, I am very hopeful that RSS will evolve and deliver content in better and new ways.

Most businesses are singularly focused and don't shift priorities. Think restaurants, stores, manufacturers, even small software companies. Only large companies can even afford to think about shifting priorities rather than staying laser focused on their original mission.
Post reply on HN