> 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, particularly Facebook. From both UI weaknesses and social perception, I initially saw G+ gaining a lot of interest among disparate folks I'd loosely label "influencers". And _all_ of that interest was shot dead due to attempts to own identity by enforcing the use of real names[1].
There are very real reasons why "average" people need alternate identities online. In some cases, it's mandatory professional separation; your work persona shouldn't be conflated with your author persona, shouldn't be conflated with your close-friends persona, etc. Circles were interesting, but solved a different problem.
In this regard, I think Schmidt's big failing was analogous to the fable of the golden goose: he killed any chance Google+ had by trying to seize the golden eggs of online identity. This delayed G+'s adoption enough that Facebook in particular was able to react, improving both its then-primary web UI, make some privacy improvements, and significantly shore up its public perception.[2]
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 for users who aren't early adopters. If they already are connected to all of your friends on Facebook, a new social network would have to be truly amazing (or Facebook would have to really screw up, in ways that "regular people" care about) to get them to move over. I think Real Names was a drop in the bucket compared to other issues.
> And _all_ of that interest was shot dead due to attempts to own identity by enforcing the use of real names[1].
It was an understandable, safe, and wrong decision at the time.
Facebook's commercial power was widely attributed to the fact that for the first time, wide swaths of people were using their real identity online. With the investment that Google put into +, the risk of having another sea of MetalHead444s was high.
I'm just unhappy that they didn't take any really bold steps to differentiate themselves from Facebook, and instead went full Microsoft by attempting to replicate the UI.
My impression was that G+ was stymied by a bad go-to-market strategy. I'm sure the real names issue didn't help, but I'm not certain it had the impact you're suggesting.
Their go to market strategy was essentially the same as the Chinese government-run construction companies that build an entire city from farmland, cut the ribbon and expect a stampede.
Getting it right is complicated and I couldn't do it justice in an HN comment, but generally I think they should've focused on a specific winnable market and grown from there.
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 completely agree with you, but don't forget one other hugely important decision wrt to G+ that was controversial at the time: the refusal to release a full fledge API. To this day, the only real client for Google+ is the one made by Google. We've all come to accept it at this point, but back then Google was a company entirely built around the concept of APIs for all their services. No matter what the service, you could integrate with it. G+ was really the first time ever that they said "no, API for you".
Had Google skated around the identity issue AND enabled an ecosystem of 3rd party APIs similar to how Twitter developed, I think G+ would own the entire social network ecosystem by now. Instead, they've got a small piece of the pie, which some will claim is more valuable because it is full of "real identities" and completely controlled by Google, but to my mind is far less value because it intersects only a tiny cross section of society who use it.
For me, the number one problem of Google+ was that many who were excited to try it, couldn't (for over a year, if I recall?). We were a 2nd-class-citizens with a Google Apps account, rather than a Gmail account.
The easy nym fix is to create a "page" with your handle. The "page" can post, comment on YouTube etc. Not heavily advertised though, I only became aware of it when I had to give up my old YouTube account.
You can easily switch between main account and nym account and you only need one password.
When you come in as a secondary competitor, especially with something like a social network that is utterly dependent on network effect, you have to avoid making even small mistakes and you need several big advantages over the competition. G+ failed on both accounts. Mostly it was just another facebooky thing, and the few missteps they made turned out to actually be rather big ones.
Nevertheless, I think the biggest problem google made with g+ is thinking that it was necessary at all. Social can be important but not every major tech company needs their own brand of facebook, it's just not necessary from any perspective, even a business one. Microsoft made the same mistake when they tried to out-google google. That sort of thing is dumb, and indicative of excess vanity. Let google be google, let facebook be facebook. If you think you actually have a better product offering that overlaps with some other company, great, put it out there. But don't set it as your google to stand toe to toe product wise with all the other tech giants. Concentrate on your own strengths, don't try to be something you're not.
Maybe the argument is right, but Eric Schmidt was replaced by Larry Page on April 4, 2010 and G+ was launched on September 20, 2011. So the former can not be responsible for how G+ works. What he failed was to not have created a social network sooner.
I agree. Google + came out at the right time, maybe a little late, but it had some solid ideas - the idea of Google building a consistent social layer across their entire space was great.
The problem was that they screwed up so very much with it. It was far too opinionated, and at the same time obsessively asked permission for every agonizing detail. They soft-pedaled it and then backtracked on the promises implicit in this soft-pedaling.
Just such a complete mess.
To me, the big failure was (1) failing to let users properly manage their identity with pseudonym-anonymous aliases and whatnot and (2) failing to let content-posters manage their spaces. Let Bloggers and YouTubers and whatnot have better control of the moderation of their comment threads.
Vic did a pretty great job getting Google+ in decent shape, but am I the only one that finds the overall strategy among these properties confusing? I know that whenever I talk with a normal, non-tech civilian they are always confused by the service.
They have Youtube (where you can upload videos), Google+ Photos (where you can upload videos and stream as well), Google Drive (where you can also upload pictures and videos in addition to creating standalone Google Docs).
It would seem to make more sense to me that there should be a Drive where I store Photos, Videos and Documents, or there should be standalone Photos/Videos and then a separate service for Documents.
To me, these services should exist separately, but Google+ should bring them all together - meaning I can decide, from my photos/videos/documents what to post to Google+. If I want to post a video to the general public, I should post it to Youtube.
Obviously people may have different use cases (consumer vs. business) - but as someone using Google services as both a consumer and business, I find the tools confusing - and it seems to be even more confusing for my Mom.
You're definitely not the only one. Trying to understand the interaction between the various Google properties makes me feel like an idiot -- and yet I'm a Web developer with a CS degree who has been using the Web just about every day since 1994.
For example, have you ever tried to schedule a Google Hangout chat? As far as I can tell, there's no way to do it from Google Hangouts. You need to first sign in to Google+, then go to Google Events and create a new event, and then you have to specify that it's a video event.
Is it a use case they just don't care about? Is there no one at the company who's looking at this setup and thinking, "wow, this is confusing and we can probably simplify that"? Or is my brain just getting too brittle to make sense of it?
Google+ became just like .Net of Microsoft. It's a umbrella for a number of confusing services forced together. Depending on whom to talk to and the favorite of the month, it can be different things.
It was social connect before. Now it's unified login. Next it's going to be whatever. Sounds awfully like .Net in the old days.
It appears that many employees did not like working with him. This was posted on Secret "One of the worst execs I've ever worked with. Completely skirted the design process and got designers to do one off projects for him that would derail plans for weeks on end and kill team trust". Interesting, since there is much praise from Page.
He's a polarizing figure. I know people who used to work in Social (and elsewhere in the company) that hated working for them, and now they don't work in Social. I also know people in Social who really admire him as a visionary leader who's not afraid to take a lot of personal flack to get the job done.
I think this is common to many people with strong opinions and the confidence to act on them. Marissa was very similar: some people absolutely hated her, while others really respected her.
I like G+ for the photo back-up from my Android phone. In fact, that seems to be the killer feature. I wonder what will happen to G+ if Facebook adds a similar feature.
The stream is interesting if you add enough people and organizations, but I find I can go for days or weeks without checking it. I know some people spend all day on G+, but it's unclear to me why.
Between FB, G+, Twitter, LinkedIn, and a host of other comment boards and social network wannabes, it seems to me this market is absolutely flooded, and sooner or later, social network fatigue has got to set in and cause people to seek something that's more nimble.
Maybe there's an opportunity here for some kind of meta-network that ties together several of these sites. I would like that. A single stream, one login, see all your texts, photos, and updates at a glance. Then you can drill deeper into the particular social network if you care to take the time.
> I like G+ for the photo back-up from my Android phone.
See, I don't use any of Google's 'let us manage your plaintext data' services except for mail (because email travels in the clear anyway, I'm not too bothered by that).
If they would enable me to store my phone, tablet & app settings, Chrome passwords and backed-up data on their servers, encrypted on the client with a key known only to clients I control, then it'd be a killer feature for me.
Indeed, if they would bake crypto into their products such that all data were encrypted to the public keys of the intended recipients, then I think that they'd be going a long way towards making the world a better place.
But as it is, there's no way that they are laying a finger on my WiFi password, my web site passwords, my photos or any other data I create and do not intend to send to the world.
> I like G+ for the photo back-up from my Android phone. In fact, that seems to be the killer feature. I wonder what will happen to G+ if Facebook adds a similar feature.
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?
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).
Google+ and Gundotra's lasting, and perhaps perverse, legacy to Google is the "social glue" that forcibly connects together most Google services.
That Google+ never quite managed to take on Facebook is obvious. A much bigger and intangible cost, IMHO, is the falling trust in much bigger Google products like search, YouTube etc. as Google+ was shoved down user's throats.
To wit, I don't use Google+, but thanks to its bundling I've also stopped logging in to any Google service on my laptop except on a strict need-to basis (for e.g. log in, update Google Drive doc, log out...or turn GPS on, use Google Maps, turn GPS off).
I find myself in the same situation, the more Google+ leaks out into their other products in an obtrusive way (ie. with "big fanfare") - the less I use those Google services.
I have however not seen many people near me, be so annoyed at this as I am. The most complains I hear about is the YouTube pop-up (that never seem to go away); Calling you out on choosing to use your real name instead of your YouTube-nickname.
> To wit, I don't use Google+, but thanks to its bundling I've also stopped logging in to any Google service on my laptop except on a strict need-to basis
This has been the unfortunate consequence for me as well.
A couple of months back I gave my feedback to Vic about how G+ is in a limbo zone between Facebook and Twitter, and that the needs of none of the use cases are met on G+. In his sincere attempt in trying to do his share of keeping the conversation vibrant on G+, Vic would (bad call, in my opinion) post pictures of his kids for thousands of his followers to see and comment on. I think this is where the non-clarity of the platform emerges. First of all, why would you post personal pictures of your family for thousands of strangers to see and comment on? And what do you do with the responses you get? Are you going to read/respond to all? What's the point of someone saying 'awww' or asking you a personal question, to which a response is not really warranted - as the askers are complete strangers. A lot of people follow others on G+ to get professional insights (as in this case) and Vic's usage of the platform as an example confuses the value proposition. My 2c.
Because any more time the person remains there is giving information to a potential competitor (and there's no point staying if you don't want to be there anymore)
I think Marissa Meyer gave Google a half hour notice.
Because typically when execs leave, they tell their boss first, arrange a transition plan as a team, and then make the announcement after a plan is in place, effectively immediately. What's unfortunate is that this isn't how much resignations work.
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.
"We’ve heard that there were tensions between Gundotra and others inside the company, especially surrounding the 'forced' integrations of Google+ into products like YouTube and Gmail. Apparently, once each of those integrations was made, they were initially being claimed as 'active user' wins until Page stepped in and made a distinction."
Even 100 million would be a healthy number. That's a lot of people to interact with. Maybe even more than enough people.
I wonder whether big is so desirable, after all. I notice that the quality of the comments has declined, especially on the news streams such as NBC etc. Whenever they put a news item on the G+ stream, there ensues a whole bunch of inane, pointless comments by people with made-up names, silly avatars, etc. The original G+ population seemed more intelligent.
As Vic departs, the elephant in the room remains - that the quoted G+ active population is probably one of the most inflated BS numbers ever.
From rating an app to commenting on youtube, to uploading on youtube, the content is posted to your mandatory Google+ account by default.
Remember the girl on Youtube who sang a song about how much Google+ sux, then the Youtube co-founder also said it sux? Those reactions should have been of major concern. Not unfixable, but you can't ignore teenage girls singing songs about how much your product sucks!
I don't understand why people have to try and read so much into someone leaving a company. High-ranking execs and employees change jobs all the time for numerous reasons.
“I’m also forever in debt to the Google+ team. This is a group of people who built social at Google against the skepticism of so many.”
Seems like the skeptics were right, no? And this is coming from a big fan of Google. Great company, but this didn't work out. Interesting that they give Vic credit for Circles. I thought it was someone else's idea, no? Great idea, they just didn't follow up on it.
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 posts (including deep linking) is much more interesting to me that twitter. There's been some absolute gems posted on g+ that simply can't be represented on Twitter. But it falls down because all these important thoughtful posts are buried in my regular social feed.
Everybody seems to like the circles ideas for organizing our connections, that's a great idea I'm surprised still hasn't been really replicated by FB. But then I can't assert different public names/faces to different circles. So my work circle sees me the same way my demoscene friends. But I'd rather use a formal identity for my work friends and a goofy presentation of myself in the demoscene (with an old crazy picture of me from a party). But I really can't. Unifying my identities, along with my logins, wasn't a good idea. And thus I don't really use g+ for social network stuff because neither I nor most of my contacts don't really want to pay the switching cost from FB/linkedin/whatever else. So literally the major initial message for what g+ is when it was launched, I almost entirely don't use or get anything out of. I say this as somebody who really doesn't enjoy FB all that much, but recognize its importance in connecting me to people I know and want to keep in touch with.
and it goes on and on. Lots of good ideas, mucked up by bad execution and a muddled vision that doesn't map well to most people's needs. It seems like the pieces of the product that are the best bits, are the ones that are not as deeply buried into the morass. Hangouts is pretty good for example and usually works like I want it to (I usually only message people). But now I hear voice, which I use all the time, is about to get bungled up with hangouts. I bet I'll hate whatever the integration looks like. There are tons of people I use voice with that I have absolutely no desire to tie up with my google+ identity.
The integration is too tight. Rather than being a bunch of well branded products, all under a unified umbrella, it's like a bunch of products were stuck in a blender, ground up and then half-baked into a some kind of...whatever it is.
I think if you can't point at a product and describe in a brief sentence, it's too big of a concept and that will start infiltrating your development of the product. What is google+?
Why not "google+ personal news" and "google+ social network" and "google+ chat" and whatever else? Each of those is focused and simple and disjoint enough not to cause confusion.
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..."
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.
I wouldn't put it that way.
A way to manage multiple efforts in one place could easily have been appreciated.
The problem was G+ was an effort to mold/carve the multiple accounts people had with Google into a single Facebook like thing. And it worked by pushing people through no-opt-out rather than pulling people by giving them something flexible and desirable. You had to turn your Gmail into a G+ account, you had to turn your Youtube into the same G+ etc.
It's true that rolling this stuff into one thing resulted in a complete mess. But it's important to notice it wasn't just a combining, it was a bondage-and-discipline style imposition.
>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.
Totally agree with this. I made some effort and still can't figure out where photos I post to google+ go. I used to use the picassa page which was pretty good about making albums and sharing, now I just use Flickr.
Right on - for me, it is that they could not make the fundamental decision of whether or not Google+ was a place or connective tissue between places. I can only guess, but it seems to me like a reaction to Facebook - they felt the need to differentiate from them and thus created this awkward construct. As I mentioned above, I think the winning strategy would have been to define Google+ as a place - the place to share stuff from all your other Google apps/sites really easily - basically create a feed of all your stuff from across the Google universe.
They've got some of it, but it doesn't quite work (for me at least) because of small gaps - like the fact that Chromecast works with Youtube, but not with Google+ Photos - thus in order to use Chromecast to display the wonderful video I just took, I have to essentially download it and reupload it to Youtube. Google+ Photos likely leverages the same tech as Youtube, but they're clearly being developed separately and that just seems silly.
Other people have put the fault on designers - to me this is a failure of product management and ultimately management to pull together the various forces that I'm sure exist within Google. And I don't think that was easy and that's why I say that Vic has some measure of success.
Google+ is, for me, almost really good - but it falls down in enough places that I would consider switching, for instance, if Dropbox came up with a full office suite to match Google Drive (which they seem to be working on).
>> Everybody seems to like the circles ideas for organizing our connections, that's a great idea I'm surprised still hasn't been really replicated by FB.
Circles for incoming content are fundamentally broken as they don't allow topical categorization of content.
If I can subscribe to feeds, and set a preference for specific individuals on those feeds, I get a vastly superior information product. You can roughly approximate this via search in G+, but only roughly.
The lack of ability to follow people's topical posts (that is: show me +JohnDoe's post to SomeCommunity) was simply idiotic.
Reddit, subreddits, friends, RES dashboard, and RSS feeds give me much of what I was hoping for from G+. And a hell of a lot more utility.
Google+ is to Facebook, what Bing is to Google Search.
It wasn't really going to work, much like the Bing. There were simply too late to the party as were Microsoft or Yahoo to 'modern' search engine.
I only hold Vic responsible for messing too much with the web design of Google+. Jesus, no one changes underwear so often as they would UI.
In the end, the failure of missing the social bandwagon solely relies on Eric. Because Vic was working on the mobile side (I think) when Facebook was kicking in.
Eric Schmidt said in a December 30, 2013 Engaget interview "my biggest mistake at Google was not anticipating social".
My response at the time: No, Schmidt, your biggest mistake was failing to realize that vast hoards of highly detailed and categorized personal data are not only an asset, but a tremendous liability.
Or as I put it: "Schmidt: My biggest mistake is still not realizing my biggest mistake"
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.
I think had Google taken the approach of 'what do we have that Facebook doesn't?' vs 'what does Facebook have that we can obtain?' would've resulted in a better product (as far as value proposition goes). There was a lot of opportunity to create a unique experience, and that simply didn't happen.
When I get notification that one of my friends (who is on Facebook full time) has joined new on Google+ after all these years, that shows that Google+ has failed miserably to reach the mass. I don't use Hangouts these days. Its only Facebook messenger (on Android/desktop).
It's impossible to keep a secret among thousands of people. Whoever sends a memo to everyone@bigcorp must assume that it reaches dozens of journalists' buddies, moles of the competition, perhaps even spies of foreign nations and definitely hundreds of folks who will bellow about it in bars in the evening.
"This is a group of people who built social at Google against the skepticism of so many.”
Well, he does have a sense of humor. They sure built it, I see many obscure names ranking on search engines...only to see an G+ empty page (along with a Youtube one--also empty. Looks like the Android signup process.)
There plans to rename the service Google- reflecting to the lack of interest of the public using the service even after forcing youtube users to have an account.
I don't know how you can compare them. G+ has had a massive support from being tied into every other product, in some cases taking features people already use and making G+ mandatory for continuing to use them. Not to mention getting tied to search such that not having a G+ presence could significantly adversely affect your SEO. Buzz certainly had its problems but it doesn't mean G+ was the right way, or that real names had anything to do with the difference.
Google+ should have launched secretly and conservatively, instead of big announcement and smash/crash into every feature. There are some aspects of it that are very appealing (mostly the nonsocial ones...) that I find useful, but due to my initial repulsion to the 'major change' I am less likely to invest in using.
you mean you had hopes that Google would use a unique account for every application again? Or that they use a different commenting solution in every app?
Sorry but that will never happen. If you're lucky they remove the '+' at some point.
g+ was garbage from the start and could not compete with facebook. And anyone who used facebook know how trash it is... In terms of UI. But google made it worse experience.
The guy who "built" my house never lifted a hammer. I think our egos can take the abbreviated form of "assembled/managed the team that built G+" in stride. Context, dude.
Gundotra sucked anyway. So does Google+. That's what happens when you "copy" technology, rather than rethinking/innovating. A new player to the space, and they just "copy" - that sucks. (apologize for my negativity.)
Try Google searching on Vic Gundotra "licking the cookie".
(a metaphor for making a project "his" before others can lay claim.)
"Gundotra, we’re told, would “lick the cookie” at Google by putting future products and features into presentations about Google+, long before his teams would be able to get to building them".
Definition of unintended consequences: I don't instantly recognise the names Eric Schmidt, Larry Page or whoever the other guy is -- I have to look them up, and to be honest I keep mixing up Larry Page and Larry Wall. But I know Vic Gundotra, because he's the wanker who pushed the real names policy and made Google+ the laughing stock among my various communities. "I am a Google employee who likes donuts", indeed!
saidajigumi|12 years ago
> “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, particularly Facebook. From both UI weaknesses and social perception, I initially saw G+ gaining a lot of interest among disparate folks I'd loosely label "influencers". And _all_ of that interest was shot dead due to attempts to own identity by enforcing the use of real names[1].
There are very real reasons why "average" people need alternate identities online. In some cases, it's mandatory professional separation; your work persona shouldn't be conflated with your author persona, shouldn't be conflated with your close-friends persona, etc. Circles were interesting, but solved a different problem.
In this regard, I think Schmidt's big failing was analogous to the fable of the golden goose: he killed any chance Google+ had by trying to seize the golden eggs of online identity. This delayed G+'s adoption enough that Facebook in particular was able to react, improving both its then-primary web UI, make some privacy improvements, and significantly shore up its public perception.[2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymwars [2] Not counting the rabid social-network and/or Facebook haters, whom cannot be satisfied.
zippergz|12 years ago
yid|12 years ago
It was an understandable, safe, and wrong decision at the time.
Facebook's commercial power was widely attributed to the fact that for the first time, wide swaths of people were using their real identity online. With the investment that Google put into +, the risk of having another sea of MetalHead444s was high.
I'm just unhappy that they didn't take any really bold steps to differentiate themselves from Facebook, and instead went full Microsoft by attempting to replicate the UI.
encoderer|12 years ago
Their go to market strategy was essentially the same as the Chinese government-run construction companies that build an entire city from farmland, cut the ribbon and expect a stampede.
Getting it right is complicated and I couldn't do it justice in an HN comment, but generally I think they should've focused on a specific winnable market and grown from there.
ericras|12 years ago
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.
zmmmmm|12 years ago
Had Google skated around the identity issue AND enabled an ecosystem of 3rd party APIs similar to how Twitter developed, I think G+ would own the entire social network ecosystem by now. Instead, they've got a small piece of the pie, which some will claim is more valuable because it is full of "real identities" and completely controlled by Google, but to my mind is far less value because it intersects only a tiny cross section of society who use it.
nostrademons|12 years ago
deelowe|12 years ago
sjs382|12 years ago
eitland|12 years ago
You can easily switch between main account and nym account and you only need one password.
pekk|12 years ago
InclinedPlane|12 years ago
Nevertheless, I think the biggest problem google made with g+ is thinking that it was necessary at all. Social can be important but not every major tech company needs their own brand of facebook, it's just not necessary from any perspective, even a business one. Microsoft made the same mistake when they tried to out-google google. That sort of thing is dumb, and indicative of excess vanity. Let google be google, let facebook be facebook. If you think you actually have a better product offering that overlaps with some other company, great, put it out there. But don't set it as your google to stand toe to toe product wise with all the other tech giants. Concentrate on your own strengths, don't try to be something you're not.
scriptproof|12 years ago
Pxtl|12 years ago
The problem was that they screwed up so very much with it. It was far too opinionated, and at the same time obsessively asked permission for every agonizing detail. They soft-pedaled it and then backtracked on the promises implicit in this soft-pedaling.
Just such a complete mess.
To me, the big failure was (1) failing to let users properly manage their identity with pseudonym-anonymous aliases and whatnot and (2) failing to let content-posters manage their spaces. Let Bloggers and YouTubers and whatnot have better control of the moderation of their comment threads.
unknown|12 years ago
[deleted]
dgregd|12 years ago
However alternate identities also allow for click fraud things and so on.
We don't know exactly why Google guys wanted so much to eliminate faked identities.
yuhong|12 years ago
inthewoods|12 years ago
They have Youtube (where you can upload videos), Google+ Photos (where you can upload videos and stream as well), Google Drive (where you can also upload pictures and videos in addition to creating standalone Google Docs).
It would seem to make more sense to me that there should be a Drive where I store Photos, Videos and Documents, or there should be standalone Photos/Videos and then a separate service for Documents.
To me, these services should exist separately, but Google+ should bring them all together - meaning I can decide, from my photos/videos/documents what to post to Google+. If I want to post a video to the general public, I should post it to Youtube.
Obviously people may have different use cases (consumer vs. business) - but as someone using Google services as both a consumer and business, I find the tools confusing - and it seems to be even more confusing for my Mom.
aasarava|12 years ago
For example, have you ever tried to schedule a Google Hangout chat? As far as I can tell, there's no way to do it from Google Hangouts. You need to first sign in to Google+, then go to Google Events and create a new event, and then you have to specify that it's a video event.
Is it a use case they just don't care about? Is there no one at the company who's looking at this setup and thinking, "wow, this is confusing and we can probably simplify that"? Or is my brain just getting too brittle to make sense of it?
ww520|12 years ago
It was social connect before. Now it's unified login. Next it's going to be whatever. Sounds awfully like .Net in the old days.
niix|12 years ago
nostrademons|12 years ago
I think this is common to many people with strong opinions and the confidence to act on them. Marissa was very similar: some people absolutely hated her, while others really respected her.
npizzolato|12 years ago
blisterpeanuts|12 years ago
The stream is interesting if you add enough people and organizations, but I find I can go for days or weeks without checking it. I know some people spend all day on G+, but it's unclear to me why.
Between FB, G+, Twitter, LinkedIn, and a host of other comment boards and social network wannabes, it seems to me this market is absolutely flooded, and sooner or later, social network fatigue has got to set in and cause people to seek something that's more nimble.
Maybe there's an opportunity here for some kind of meta-network that ties together several of these sites. I would like that. A single stream, one login, see all your texts, photos, and updates at a glance. Then you can drill deeper into the particular social network if you care to take the time.
wtbob|12 years ago
See, I don't use any of Google's 'let us manage your plaintext data' services except for mail (because email travels in the clear anyway, I'm not too bothered by that).
If they would enable me to store my phone, tablet & app settings, Chrome passwords and backed-up data on their servers, encrypted on the client with a key known only to clients I control, then it'd be a killer feature for me.
Indeed, if they would bake crypto into their products such that all data were encrypted to the public keys of the intended recipients, then I think that they'd be going a long way towards making the world a better place.
But as it is, there's no way that they are laying a finger on my WiFi password, my web site passwords, my photos or any other data I create and do not intend to send to the world.
traek|12 years ago
You'll probably find this interesting, then: https://www.facebook.com/help/photosync
Google+ Auto Backup is still far ahead of Facebook's solution for me, though, because of its superior online photo editing and automatic touch-ups.
e15ctr0n|12 years ago
[1] https://www.secret.ly/p/wxdnkdhjnsocjxwnizhdpacufc
ulfw|12 years ago
mahyarm|12 years ago
powera|12 years ago
r0h1n|12 years ago
That Google+ never quite managed to take on Facebook is obvious. A much bigger and intangible cost, IMHO, is the falling trust in much bigger Google products like search, YouTube etc. as Google+ was shoved down user's throats.
To wit, I don't use Google+, but thanks to its bundling I've also stopped logging in to any Google service on my laptop except on a strict need-to basis (for e.g. log in, update Google Drive doc, log out...or turn GPS on, use Google Maps, turn GPS off).
ersii|12 years ago
I have however not seen many people near me, be so annoyed at this as I am. The most complains I hear about is the YouTube pop-up (that never seem to go away); Calling you out on choosing to use your real name instead of your YouTube-nickname.
alextingle|12 years ago
I'm an AdSense publisher, so occasionally I need to log in to see how much they've been screwing me. I just have an alternative browser for that.
snsr|12 years ago
This has been the unfortunate consequence for me as well.
kkotak|12 years ago
lewisflude|12 years ago
raverbashing|12 years ago
I think Marissa Meyer gave Google a half hour notice.
eitally|12 years ago
higherpurpose|12 years ago
https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/MFrDF3W4...
ThePhysicist|12 years ago
pessimizer|12 years ago
http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/24/google-is-walking-dead/
blisterpeanuts|12 years ago
I wonder whether big is so desirable, after all. I notice that the quality of the comments has declined, especially on the news streams such as NBC etc. Whenever they put a news item on the G+ stream, there ensues a whole bunch of inane, pointless comments by people with made-up names, silly avatars, etc. The original G+ population seemed more intelligent.
exodust|12 years ago
From rating an app to commenting on youtube, to uploading on youtube, the content is posted to your mandatory Google+ account by default.
Remember the girl on Youtube who sang a song about how much Google+ sux, then the Youtube co-founder also said it sux? Those reactions should have been of major concern. Not unfixable, but you can't ignore teenage girls singing songs about how much your product sucks!
rjf1990|12 years ago
k-mcgrady|12 years ago
They don't, that's why people are reading into it.
DannyBee|12 years ago
(http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/149573/inside-out-cows)
mathattack|12 years ago
Seems like the skeptics were right, no? And this is coming from a big fan of Google. Great company, but this didn't work out. Interesting that they give Vic credit for Circles. I thought it was someone else's idea, no? Great idea, they just didn't follow up on it.
bane|12 years ago
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 posts (including deep linking) is much more interesting to me that twitter. There's been some absolute gems posted on g+ that simply can't be represented on Twitter. But it falls down because all these important thoughtful posts are buried in my regular social feed.
Everybody seems to like the circles ideas for organizing our connections, that's a great idea I'm surprised still hasn't been really replicated by FB. But then I can't assert different public names/faces to different circles. So my work circle sees me the same way my demoscene friends. But I'd rather use a formal identity for my work friends and a goofy presentation of myself in the demoscene (with an old crazy picture of me from a party). But I really can't. Unifying my identities, along with my logins, wasn't a good idea. And thus I don't really use g+ for social network stuff because neither I nor most of my contacts don't really want to pay the switching cost from FB/linkedin/whatever else. So literally the major initial message for what g+ is when it was launched, I almost entirely don't use or get anything out of. I say this as somebody who really doesn't enjoy FB all that much, but recognize its importance in connecting me to people I know and want to keep in touch with.
and it goes on and on. Lots of good ideas, mucked up by bad execution and a muddled vision that doesn't map well to most people's needs. It seems like the pieces of the product that are the best bits, are the ones that are not as deeply buried into the morass. Hangouts is pretty good for example and usually works like I want it to (I usually only message people). But now I hear voice, which I use all the time, is about to get bungled up with hangouts. I bet I'll hate whatever the integration looks like. There are tons of people I use voice with that I have absolutely no desire to tie up with my google+ identity.
The integration is too tight. Rather than being a bunch of well branded products, all under a unified umbrella, it's like a bunch of products were stuck in a blender, ground up and then half-baked into a some kind of...whatever it is.
I think if you can't point at a product and describe in a brief sentence, it's too big of a concept and that will start infiltrating your development of the product. What is google+?
Why not "google+ personal news" and "google+ social network" and "google+ chat" and whatever else? Each of those is focused and simple and disjoint enough not to cause confusion.
welshrats|12 years ago
" 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..."
joe_the_user|12 years ago
I wouldn't put it that way.
A way to manage multiple efforts in one place could easily have been appreciated.
The problem was G+ was an effort to mold/carve the multiple accounts people had with Google into a single Facebook like thing. And it worked by pushing people through no-opt-out rather than pulling people by giving them something flexible and desirable. You had to turn your Gmail into a G+ account, you had to turn your Youtube into the same G+ etc.
It's true that rolling this stuff into one thing resulted in a complete mess. But it's important to notice it wasn't just a combining, it was a bondage-and-discipline style imposition.
acomjean|12 years ago
Totally agree with this. I made some effort and still can't figure out where photos I post to google+ go. I used to use the picassa page which was pretty good about making albums and sharing, now I just use Flickr.
inthewoods|12 years ago
They've got some of it, but it doesn't quite work (for me at least) because of small gaps - like the fact that Chromecast works with Youtube, but not with Google+ Photos - thus in order to use Chromecast to display the wonderful video I just took, I have to essentially download it and reupload it to Youtube. Google+ Photos likely leverages the same tech as Youtube, but they're clearly being developed separately and that just seems silly.
Other people have put the fault on designers - to me this is a failure of product management and ultimately management to pull together the various forces that I'm sure exist within Google. And I don't think that was easy and that's why I say that Vic has some measure of success.
Google+ is, for me, almost really good - but it falls down in enough places that I would consider switching, for instance, if Dropbox came up with a full office suite to match Google Drive (which they seem to be working on).
anorark|12 years ago
Facebook has something called "Lists" to organize your friend groups which is very similar to circles on google+. https://www.facebook.com/help/friends/lists
inthewoods|12 years ago
dredmorbius|12 years ago
If I can subscribe to feeds, and set a preference for specific individuals on those feeds, I get a vastly superior information product. You can roughly approximate this via search in G+, but only roughly.
The lack of ability to follow people's topical posts (that is: show me +JohnDoe's post to SomeCommunity) was simply idiotic.
Reddit, subreddits, friends, RES dashboard, and RSS feeds give me much of what I was hoping for from G+. And a hell of a lot more utility.
k_kelly|12 years ago
Tloewald|12 years ago
"Maximum Leader Page declares total victory of Google+. Workers to report to railyard at dawn for reassignment."
frade33|12 years ago
It wasn't really going to work, much like the Bing. There were simply too late to the party as were Microsoft or Yahoo to 'modern' search engine.
I only hold Vic responsible for messing too much with the web design of Google+. Jesus, no one changes underwear so often as they would UI.
In the end, the failure of missing the social bandwagon solely relies on Eric. Because Vic was working on the mobile side (I think) when Facebook was kicking in.
hartator|12 years ago
Last week! :D
yuhong|12 years ago
dredmorbius|12 years ago
My response at the time: No, Schmidt, your biggest mistake was failing to realize that vast hoards of highly detailed and categorized personal data are not only an asset, but a tremendous liability.
Or as I put it: "Schmidt: My biggest mistake is still not realizing my biggest mistake"
http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1u356d/schmidt_...
cessor|12 years ago
jgalt212|12 years ago
Ergo, there are some pretty strong opinions about Vic.
jseliger|12 years ago
huhtenberg|12 years ago
These aggressive downvoting sprees also seem to coincide with that change in HN stewardship from few weeks ago.
yuhong|12 years ago
chresko|12 years ago
arunc|12 years ago
sidcool|12 years ago
mark_l_watson|12 years ago
I am just a light user of G+, FB and Twitter. That said, I enjoy G+ the most.
discordance|12 years ago
unknown|12 years ago
[deleted]
davidgerard|12 years ago
unknown|12 years ago
[deleted]
unknown|12 years ago
[deleted]
guyzero|12 years ago
igorgue|12 years ago
How come all these "internal memos" always leak? Is it fine to share an internal email without getting in trouble at a public company?
jonas21|12 years ago
https://plus.google.com/+VicGundotra/posts/MFrDF3W4RJL
https://plus.google.com/+LarryPage/posts/A2gm48nzitx
thrillgore|12 years ago
In some cases, the wording is changed so HR can lock down who sent it out, and then discipline that person.
RivieraKid|12 years ago
walshemj|12 years ago
Normally some one has a line they want to run and have their friends in the media to spin stuff to its the same in politics.
praptak|12 years ago
Steko|12 years ago
ForFreedom|12 years ago
unknown|12 years ago
[deleted]
yigitdemirag|12 years ago
hawase|12 years ago
Vic: https://plus.google.com/+VicGundotra/posts/MFrDF3W4RJL
Larry: https://plus.google.com/+LarryPage/posts/A2gm48nzitx
arebop|12 years ago
macleanjr|12 years ago
whoismua|12 years ago
Well, he does have a sense of humor. They sure built it, I see many obscure names ranking on search engines...only to see an G+ empty page (along with a Youtube one--also empty. Looks like the Android signup process.)
leccine|12 years ago
mauricio-OH|12 years ago
gdulli|12 years ago
arkj|12 years ago
akennberg|12 years ago
zmmmmm|12 years ago
unknown|12 years ago
[deleted]
steele|12 years ago
nfoz|12 years ago
unknown|12 years ago
[deleted]
kingnight|12 years ago
bookwormAT|12 years ago
Sorry but that will never happen. If you're lucky they remove the '+' at some point.
DogeDogeDoge|12 years ago
Google will try to recover now :)
bkurtz13|12 years ago
libria|12 years ago
samstave|12 years ago
unknown|12 years ago
[deleted]
teawithcarl|12 years ago
Try Google searching on Vic Gundotra "licking the cookie".
(a metaphor for making a project "his" before others can lay claim.)
"Gundotra, we’re told, would “lick the cookie” at Google by putting future products and features into presentations about Google+, long before his teams would be able to get to building them".
http://www.businessinsider.com/sex-and-politics-at-google-it...
yuhong|12 years ago
etfb|12 years ago