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

511–520 of 733 posts

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#511

Post by mindgam3 »

pantalaimon wrote: post #497
mindgam3 wrote: post #373

RIP. Like so many of Google’s high profile efforts (anyone remember Wave? Glass, etc), a bunch of good ideas and great tech brought down by an utter failure to understand the human element/social psychology angle. Google+ was dead in the water from day one. You don’t beat Facebook at social by building a slightly different product with some cool ideas like Circles. Going for feature parity was a mistake. Instead they…

> Going for feature parity was a mistake But there was no feature parity, not even close. When G+ launched it was more like a tech demo, interest died down when people discovered that there really was not much to do. They added more features over time, but at that point the hype was already dead.

They had the important stuff. Posting content, a feed, friends. This is what drove Facebook. All the other stuff was icing on the cake.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#512

Post by srtjstjsj »

spunker540 wrote: post #344
notahappycamper wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is where the loading bays are, so they keep the fridges nearby so cold items have less chance to heat up. Plus milk is often stocked from behind, which can only be done where they have the extra space at the back of the store.

I'm not sure that's a compelling reason. Why aren't frozen goods at the back of the store then? And are you sure milk needs to be stocked from behind? Is it at the back of the store because it needs to be stocked from behind - or is it stocked from behind simply because its at the back of the store?

Frozen food has a freezer-life of months. That's what freezing is for. Fridge food has a fridge-live of days.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#513

Post by srtjstjsj »

kurtisc wrote: post #377
notahappycamper wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is where the loading bays are, so they keep the fridges nearby so cold items have less chance to heat up. Plus milk is often stocked from behind, which can only be done where they have the extra space at the back of the store.

>That is where the loading bays are, so they keep the fridges nearby so cold items have less chance to heat up. The distance from bay to fridge plus fridge to the exit is the same wherever it goes.

Heating up on the way home is the customer's problem, not the store's problem.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#514

Post by srtjstjsj »

CM30 wrote: post #416
kwillets wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The milk is always at the back of the store.

Not from what I've seen in the UK. It heavily depends on the store where the products are placed, and the milk could be anywhere from near the door to the back. For example, in Aldi stores, the milk is usually kept quite near the entrance, along with the kind of things you'd keep in the fridge (butter, cheese, etc) and the bread. In the likes of MS and Waitrose, it's usually somewhere near the side of the store, not…

Which shops have a Z pattern? Which shops move products around? I've never seen that.

Costco certainly doesn't Costco has aisles, and sections for each major product category. IKEA has a "tour the store" design which is nice for a store you browse because you want something for every section (room in your house). You can go directly where you want if you know what you want.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#515

Post by Nelson69 »

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…

Google "hate" is a product of their success. IBM, MS, Apple, they all get it or have had it too.

What is frustrating with plus though, it was clear from outside Google that the company wasn't completely behind it. It also seems like it was good enough that they could have played with it to find the right recipe. I haven't followed it that closely, but from the outside, it looks like it launched, it didn't achieve facebook-like popularity immediately, they just sort of babysit it for a while and now it's shutting down. I know better, but it doesn't seem like the company tried very hard... Where were the stupid drug dealer games or some kind of fantasy football apps? It was only part social or something.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#516

Post by pantalaimon »

mindgam3 wrote: post #511
pantalaimon wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Going for feature parity was a mistake But there was no feature parity, not even close. When G+ launched it was more like a tech demo, interest died down when people discovered that there really was not much to do. They added more features over time, but at that point the hype was already dead.

They had the important stuff. Posting content, a feed, friends. This is what drove Facebook. All the other stuff was icing on the cake.

There were no events, no pages.

If I just want to chat with friends I might just a well use a messenger with a group chat.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#517

Post by Aeolun »

bcherny wrote: post #494
mindgam3 wrote: post #373

RIP. Like so many of Google’s high profile efforts (anyone remember Wave? Glass, etc), a bunch of good ideas and great tech brought down by an utter failure to understand the human element/social psychology angle. Google+ was dead in the water from day one. You don’t beat Facebook at social by building a slightly different product with some cool ideas like Circles. Going for feature parity was a mistake. Instead they…

> Instead they should have tried to identify a niche where Facebook was failing (say, intimate private sharing, or the antithesis of the narcissist fest) and build up a loyal core of rabidly passionate users, then slowly expanded from there. Great advice for a YC startup, but not how big companies that already have large user bases operate. Big companies have a metric they want to drive, then look for big opportuniti…

Then they shouldn’t have tried starting a social network at all.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#518

Post by ytjohn »

ihuman wrote: post #446
mindgam3 wrote: post #373

RIP. Like so many of Google’s high profile efforts (anyone remember Wave? Glass, etc), a bunch of good ideas and great tech brought down by an utter failure to understand the human element/social psychology angle. Google+ was dead in the water from day one. You don’t beat Facebook at social by building a slightly different product with some cool ideas like Circles. Going for feature parity was a mistake. Instead they…

> anyone remember Wave? Doesn't Google Wave live on as Google Docs?

Google Docs predates Wave and has since been rebranded as Google Drive. Various blogs have pointed out how certain aspects of Wave have been integrated into Docs/Sheets/Drive. The big concept with wave was that you did operations. "Go to row 12 and bold characters 15 through 38" as an operation within a document, as opposed to synchronizing an entire object. So when you set your cursor on a word in the document, it sent that as an operation, and any other clients editing the document could see where your cursor was at. Operations at the individual character level would sync to all attached clients and you can see edits in realtime. It's really interesting when a team at work is all looking at and modifying the same spreadsheet. The box they are editing is highlighted so you naturally stay away from it. If you are "idle", you might click your cursor away from all the activity as a common courtesy.

Good Docs had this to a degree before Wave, but it was unpolished. Two people could definitely edit a sheet together, but editing a document was more cumbersome (whole blocks of text would update at once). After Wave, they took the concepts and you could then see everyone editing the document as they typed or simply moved around the document.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#519

Post by mindgam3 »

pantalaimon wrote: post #500
mindgam3 wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t remember many particularly egregious failures in UI and product design. In my experience it was well designed, but served no purpose whatsoever given that it was almost a complete clone of Facebook features, thus no reason for any of my facebook addicted friends to start using it, thus no reason for me to use it, thus dead in the water due to marketing fail and not product. Maybe I missed some specific UX or…

When it launched I had several friends on g+ that were not on Facebook. Facebook already had a bad rep, but Google was still cool. The circles were a great idea. I didn't see any problems with the ui either. But there was simply not much to do, contrary to what you'd expect with all the other Google services available.

“Friends on G+ that weren’t on Facebook” I was still very high on Facebook kool aid at that time. It may have had a bad rep to some people, but this sentiment was years away from reaching people like me.

Note that I am about as much of a Facebook insider as possible without actually having worked there. I personally know most of their top execs, Zuck interviewed me in 2007, turned down a PM offer to join Bebo but stayed close with a number of them for years. I would have loved to be filthy rich with those options, but if I had joined I would feel guilty for the destruction I contributed to.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#520

Post by srtjstjsj »

crunchlibrarian wrote: post #74
_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…

To be fair Google+ just straight up stole the circle idea from that Path social network after failing to buy them.

Can you share evidence that Path had circles?
Post reply on HN