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Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

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Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#521

Post by Aeolun »

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.

The existence of core features does not a compelling argument for switching make.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#522

Post by mindgam3 »

buboard wrote: post #505
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…

> finally admitting defeat. Not so much defeat , but more avoiding future liability. They sure could afford to run it , but under the current circumstances, a data leak like the one they claim they didn't have would be very damaging to their image and their moneymakers.

If shuttering a consumer product and relegating it to enterprise isn’t admitting defeat, then I don’t know what you mean by defeat.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#523

Post by Aeolun »

andybak wrote: post #435
village-idiot wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The acquisition of YouTube might’ve not been bad for Google, but I could make the argument that it’s been bad for the rest of us.

I generally still think of YouTube as a global good. Obviously it's a mixed bag but I'd be really sad if it ever vanished.

Vimeo would just take over.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#524

Post by Animats »

So many "social" systems have gone down the same path to collapse:

- Create a way to communicate with your friends.

- Try to monetize it by adding feeds of ads and irrelevant junk.

- Users get annoyed.

- Double down on the ads.

- More users get annoyed and leave.

- Usage shrinks.

This used to be called "pulling a Myspace". Since then, Twitter, Google+, WeChat in India, and Facebook have followed Myspace's lead.

It works out OK for the founders if they cash out around step 3.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#525

Post by srtjstjsj »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #269
vocatus_gate wrote: post #192

I'm going to get downvoted for this, but you don't have to state "IMHO" or any variation of that in your posts. You are the one posting it; we know it's your opinion. It just adds grammatical clutter and noise to an otherwise well thought-out post. IMHO

In many cultures, voicing equivocation, doubt, or similar provisos is a social norm when expressing your opinion. It certainly is in British English, for example. Don’t assume everyone on HN has US social norms.

"IMHO" is an American Internet English term, and using it is a US social norm.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#526

Post by village-idiot »

andybak wrote: post #435
village-idiot wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The acquisition of YouTube might’ve not been bad for Google, but I could make the argument that it’s been bad for the rest of us.

I generally still think of YouTube as a global good. Obviously it's a mixed bag but I'd be really sad if it ever vanished.

Considering it’s one of the driving forces of radicalization, I really can’t agree with that.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#527

Post by varrock »

smelendez wrote: post #402
dekhn wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an entire presentation made by a product manager at Google on circles: https://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-netwo... The presentation was amazing and I can definitely believe is influenced leadership at Google to make a product that was "better" for people who have complicated social networks (the "I want to go to a rave on the weekend and share those photos with my friends, and then go to…

I think the real solution to this turned out to be using different apps. Maybe Facebook for general friends and family posts, Snapchat with friends, WhatsApp chat with another group of friends, Twitter for truly public posts, Slack for work, etc.

One thing the younger kids are doing is making separate accounts altogether. I know for certain I follow my younger brother on his "family approved" account and not his "you're my close friend" account.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#528

Post by srtjstjsj »

reitanqild wrote: post #178
mindcrime wrote: post #20

LOL, one more example of why one should never depend on anything from Google. developer adoption Gee, I wonder why? Maybe because they never released a usable write API and were basically just a little less developer-hostile than Twitter? G+ had a lot of potential, had Google chosen to truly embrace Open Standards, federation, and usable API's. As it is, they shot themselves in the foot by creating JAWG (Just Another…

It doesn't help that half of HN and I guess other communities as well decided to blame Google+ the social network for everything that was bad: - linking their accounts (yep, bad) - shuttering Reader (didn't care personally but I really doubt they calculated how much it would cost them in goodwill) - etc ... and decided to use Google+ the social network as a target for all that frustration. Google+ was really nice. An…

People blame Google+ for that because Google branded all of that as Google+. At the time, Google+ invaded and occupied almost all Google properties, including YouTube (which was independent enough to resist part), Blogger (which resisted some), Reader (destroyed solely to remove Google+ competition), Hangouts, even Google OAuth

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#529

Post by ZainRiz »

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…

Uh...it's right there in the blog:

Underlining this, as part of our Project Strobe audit, we discovered a bug in one of the Google+ People APIs:

Users can grant access to their Profile data, and the public Profile information of their friends, to Google+ apps, via the API.

The bug meant that apps also had access to Profile fields that were shared with the user, but not marked as public.

This data is limited to static, optional Google+ Profile fields including name, email address, occupation, gender and age. (See the full list on our developer site.) It does not include any other data you may have posted or connected to Google+ or any other service, like Google+ posts, messages, Google account data, phone numbers or G Suite content.

We discovered and immediately patched this bug in March 2018. We believe it occurred after launch as a result of the API’s interaction with a subsequent Google+ code change.

We made Google+ with privacy in mind and therefore keep this API’s log data for only two weeks. That means we cannot confirm which users were impacted by this bug. However, we ran a detailed analysis over the two weeks prior to patching the bug, and from that analysis, the Profiles of up to 500,000 Google+ accounts were potentially affected. Our analysis showed that up to 438 applications may have used this API.

We found no evidence that any developer was aware of this bug, or abusing the API, and we found no evidence that any Profile data was misused.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#530

Post by srtjstjsj »

oculusthrift wrote: post #182
aabraham wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's the bigger issue here. For 3 years there was a vulnerability. And when they did find out about it, they chose not to disclose the information. Why? B/c there wasn't that many people using it. And so because of that, let's shut down G+, rather than be scrutinized about how they chose not to let it be know, that users information were available through this vulnerability.

this is the same company that threatens other companies that if they don’t patch a vulnerability fast enough, the time will release it to the public. class act

They patched the vuln as soon as they discovered it.
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