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

Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

recode.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 267 posts

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#71

Post by [deleted] »

powera wrote: post #40
e15ctr0n wrote: post #20

The comments on the Secret app[1] speculate that he might be joining Mozilla, Github or the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. What if he rejoins Microsoft instead? [1] https://www.secret.ly/p/wxdnkdhjnsocjxwnizhdpacufc

I think that's just people suggesting companies that have had a recent people of hiring people that say stupid things, not serious speculation. [Brendan Eich, Tom Preston-Warner, Tom Perkins] Because vicg@ also says a lot of stupid things (and does a lot of stupid things).

[deleted]

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#72

Post by cookiecaper »

ericras wrote: post #58
saidajigumi wrote: post #34

> Former CEO Eric Schmidt admitted in an interview at the D conference in 2011 that he missed the boat on the rise of identity on the Internet. > “I clearly knew that I had to do something, and I failed to do it,” he said. “A CEO should take responsibility. I screwed up.” I think Eric screwed up in a deeper way that this quote admits. Google+ came up at a time of broader dissatisfaction with other social networks, pa…

In all honesty I probably would have pursued the same real names policy if I had been running Google+. They were trying to avoid having it immediately devolve into the YouTube comments section - aka the scourge of the Internet. I also think the real name policy is one of those things that we give too much weight too in analyzing the service. Lacking pseudonyms is not the reason "average" people have not used it.

Totally agree that "real names" is a red herring. It irritated a small group of influential tech personalities, but as far as their influence may expand, it doesn't dictate which social network reigns supreme.

The reality is that once a service hits a certain critical mass it's almost impossible to extract. Facebook, like Windows, is now a permanent fixture in the tech community, and like Windows, it will only go away by slow, eventual deterioration made possible only by the gross incompetence of the company providing the software.

People don't care how much better your software is, the inertia will keep all but the most tech-savvy on the inferior solution as long as it provides basic semblances of expected functionality.

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#73

Post by CamperBob2 »

dang wrote: post #61
huhtenberg wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There A LOT of downvoting across all HN threads recently. In every single topic there are comments upon comments that are in gray and barely any actually deserving to be there. These aggressive downvoting sprees also seem to coincide with that change in HN stewardship from few weeks ago.

Your wording suggests that maybe you didn't see sama's announcement about the change we made to count more downvotes [1] or any of my recent comments about it. People can reasonably differ, of course, but I don't agree that barely any negatively scored comments deserve to be there. I look at all the negatively scored comments, and the vast majority are either not substantive, not civil, or both. It's true, though, th…

I won't complain about downvotes, but I would like to request a feature. In a manner similar to 'showdead', I'd like to be able to disable graying.

Here's why: when you gray out a comment to the point of illegibility, as is happening more and more, that only makes me want to read it more. So I end up paying more attention to downmodded comments, not less. Somehow, I don't think that's what you were going for.

I would rather have the option to judge comments on their content, and not their color.

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#74

Post by daeken »

ericras wrote: post #58
saidajigumi wrote: post #34

> Former CEO Eric Schmidt admitted in an interview at the D conference in 2011 that he missed the boat on the rise of identity on the Internet. > “I clearly knew that I had to do something, and I failed to do it,” he said. “A CEO should take responsibility. I screwed up.” I think Eric screwed up in a deeper way that this quote admits. Google+ came up at a time of broader dissatisfaction with other social networks, pa…

In all honesty I probably would have pursued the same real names policy if I had been running Google+. They were trying to avoid having it immediately devolve into the YouTube comments section - aka the scourge of the Internet. I also think the real name policy is one of those things that we give too much weight too in analyzing the service. Lacking pseudonyms is not the reason "average" people have not used it.

> I also think the real name policy is one of those things that we give too much weight too in analyzing the service. Lacking pseudonyms is not the reason "average" people have not used it.

I don't think that anyone will argue that pseudonyms are important to the average user. However, they are important to a small but influential group of users. The type of early adopter that otherwise could've driven G+ upward.

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#75

Post by chime »

ericras wrote: post #58
saidajigumi wrote: post #34

> Former CEO Eric Schmidt admitted in an interview at the D conference in 2011 that he missed the boat on the rise of identity on the Internet. > “I clearly knew that I had to do something, and I failed to do it,” he said. “A CEO should take responsibility. I screwed up.” I think Eric screwed up in a deeper way that this quote admits. Google+ came up at a time of broader dissatisfaction with other social networks, pa…

In all honesty I probably would have pursued the same real names policy if I had been running Google+. They were trying to avoid having it immediately devolve into the YouTube comments section - aka the scourge of the Internet. I also think the real name policy is one of those things that we give too much weight too in analyzing the service. Lacking pseudonyms is not the reason "average" people have not used it.

The alternative to real names is not necessarily Youtube or 4chan. Reddit, HN, Fark, Mefi, Slashdot, and tons of other lard communities work fine with just usernames. The alternative to real names is moderation, policies, flagging/reporting etc. Abuse is always a problem in large communities regardless of real name or username policy and many different solutions exist for each type of abuse. Forcing real name usage was never the solution to any form of abuse.

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#76

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…

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

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#77

Post by ThePhysicist »

370 million monthly active users. I wonder how many of those interact with Google+ by mere accident. Personally, the only time I post stuff on G+ is when I'm using another Google service (e.g. Youtube) and they post it to my G+ stream, often without my knowledge or consent.

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#78

Post by qq66 »

zippergz wrote: post #65
saidajigumi wrote: post #34

> Former CEO Eric Schmidt admitted in an interview at the D conference in 2011 that he missed the boat on the rise of identity on the Internet. > “I clearly knew that I had to do something, and I failed to do it,” he said. “A CEO should take responsibility. I screwed up.” I think Eric screwed up in a deeper way that this quote admits. Google+ came up at a time of broader dissatisfaction with other social networks, pa…

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…

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 success (but this may not have been aligned with their high-level organizational goals for building G+ in the first place).

Re: Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

#80

Post by welshrats »

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…

This is the Frankenstein problem these type of apps have. You see it in stuff like SharePoint or G+, the horror stems from trying to do much, no matter how well you do the core things, the amalgamation is horrific to behold, unfocused, a sprawling tapestry of decay. People forget that Dr. Frankenstein selected the most beautiful parts to create the monster, it wasn't meant to be a horror it was meant to be a Promethean.

" How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavored to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! -- Great God! ... I had desired it with an ardor that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart..."

Post reply on HN