Ha, what a disaster G+ has to be for Google. They must kind of be looking at it like "ew what do we do with this thing now?"
They should've taken a more holistic and serious approach to bringing your offline identity online. Instead they tried to copy FB. They should've just called it Google Identity(with the same level of seriousness as Youtube's copyright protection product: Content ID) and provided real-life perks with associating say your Driver's license number with it which maybe would allow me to renew my driver's license much more quickly. I don't know. G+ is just weak.
I mean at the end of the day, they DO have your identity. I'm sure their algorithms could within a certainly small margin of error determine who I am to a reasonably high degree of probability based on nothing other than lines in a bunch of log files(DoubleClick Ad requests on various sites, YouTube video watch times, Google Searches based on time of day/location, mobile usage, etc); again, regardless of where or when or how I use Google(i.e. using igonito browsers, using a friend's phone, using a computer an internet cafe, etc.). So why not throw all that information under one umbrella, Google Identity, and provide it to me once I claim it.
They're likely able to treat online "behavior" as essentially unique online fingerprints and can just associate that with individual users; that is, they don't really need uniquely identifying data(unique IDs, usernames, etc.), they just need to watch your online activity(regardless of if you're logged in or have identifying cookies, etc.) for a while in order to identify you.
I assume it's because consumers probably aren't ready to know just how much data Google actually has on them AND how much information can be extracted from said data. It's likely pretty accurate and pretty scary.
I know it's a bit childish, but for my pseudonymous Google account, I kept getting these notices that they were going to disable my Google+ account unless I gave them my real name, unless I could show them documentation proving that the pseudonym was my legal name, so I just found some pictures of middle fingers and that sort of thing and photoshopped them onto a photo of a license and submitted that. They give you a few chances to submit something, so I had a little fun picking out new insulting pictures for a while, until I got bored of it (which was almost instantly).
Obviously it wasn't going to have any effect other than to virtually flip off some random person being paid to check IDs, but it was at least cathartic in the face of such a stupid, stupid policy.
Google is in an ugly place right now. Not only are they beholden to the advertising agency they are now the poster boy for all the NSA spying and other controversies because of their massive information footprint, real name policies, constant nagging for phone numbers in gmail, etc.
Apple and others have positioned itself as privacy friendly as well, which is a double whammy.
I'd love to see G+ be the seedy version of Facebook. Fake names, nudity, etc. You can't beat facebook by being facebook.
Hopefully, "real names everywhere" is a fad that is dying. The search engines and employers of the world don't need to know my every political thought or see my every vacation photo. Zuckerberg's idea of the internet exists only because its profitable for him. In every other respect its insane.
After Elon Musk, and possibly partly inspired by him, Page has driven Google to be, by far, the most ambitious tech titan in the game right now.
Looking past G+ and its nonsense (which is an ugly thing, granted.):
- Loon is in motion, and in conjunction with recent drone acquisitions, will likely bring internet to currently unconnected billions.
- Self-driving cars are actually happening.
- The smart contact lens for glucose monitoring will change the lives of diabetics.
- Investments and acquisitions in AI and Robotics speak to a MASSIVE ambition in that sphere.
- The recent announcements in their consumer lines with TV, Nest, Auto, and wearables are extremely competitive.
And these are just the things we know about.
Compare all this to Apple (which I love, but a Beats acquisition, a bigger iPhone, and a watch coming? Woop-de-doo.), and Facebook (how's Slingshot doing?), it's not even the same game anymore.
To say that Google is an ugly place, or that they're "beholden to the advertising agency", is naive to the bigger picture.
I thought Facebook was the seedy version of Facebook. Or has everyone already forgotten about Facebook apps, shitty viral games, the ever-shifting Facebook platform, fake likes, bogus ad impressions and all of the other shady shit?
Interesting that you mention the NSA, yet position others like Apple as being "privacy friendly".
The problem, the biggest problem with the NSA is that any US company can be coerced into whatever the NSA wants, without you or me ever finding out about it, even if the company in question wants to act in good faith and protect the privacy of its customers.
If Apple was or is coerced by the NSA to install backdoors into OS X or iOS, do you think you'll find out about it? And given the popularity of Apple's operating systems, I would be surprised if that didn't happen already.
Heck, it's not even open-source we're talking about. At least then you'd be able to inspect the source and compile and deploy your own binaries. And interestingly, I find Android to be better for the privacy/security conscious, even though it was born out of Google's desires for their ads to remain relevant in a mobile world - not because I trust Google, because I don't, but because it has less restrictions on what you can do with it, it's more transparent and it allows for forks (YMMV).
On the Real Names policy, I also hope it's a fad that is dying. What a stupid policy to begin with. I also had high hopes for G+, too bad it didn't happen.
I pretty much grew up on-line. I got into BBSs when 1200 baud was considered fast. The basics of having on-line identities really have changed all that much in all that time. To newer generations it's even more natural. When I see companies completely screw up basic stuff like this, I wonder if these decisions are being made by people who were never really part of the on-line world and fundamentally don't "get" it?
The people at Google making these decisions aren't some 75 year old fuddy duddy luddites, they're about my age and they're running one of the most important properties in that world. Screwing up something as basic as this has just seemed so...weird. I can only imagine that the final say-so came from somebody/people who fundamentally didn't grow up with the same kind of comfort and experience I did on-line and really doesn't understand it.
But then again, my parents, who never even used a computer until the 2000s, and never even got on-line until 2003 or 2004 get it. It seems to obvious as soon as you jump on-line that you are both empowered and need to have on-line identities that you can control.
I really wonder if the people at the top are really part of the on-line world, or just completely removed from it and spend their time wondering about all these digital ants in the digital ant farm and wondering what we're all about?
> spend their time wondering about all these digital ants in the digital ant farm and wondering what we're all about?
This announcement certainly reinforces that notion. Google+ announces as an anonymous "we", that their name policy "helped create a community made up of real people." As opposed to fake people? Anonymous people are real, so is this a reference to bots? The name policy prevented bots? No. It didn't. This is ridiculous corporate code language. So ya, pushing around their digital ants is exactly how this announcement reads.
That is my sense as well, people who are decidedly not nerds grabbed hold of the reigns. It's been a long time since I've heard the phrase "Don't be evil".
"When we launched Google+ over three years ago, we had a lot of restrictions on what name you could use on your profile. This helped create a community made up of real people, but it also excluded a number of people who wanted to be part of it without using their real names."
I wanted to use my real name. My legal, backed by a name change order, mononymic name.
After watching them fumble it, trying to use a space or a dot, and being told to gtfo or change it to a "real" name (and once again, fuck you very hard Google, even the TSA is able to deal with this), I left.
And now I'm looking around for the giant hole in my life that can finally be filled by G+. ... looking ... looking ...
I kind of wish Google would have let you pick which display name to use on a per-circle basis. Then I could use a pseudonym with strangers, a nickname with friends, and my real name with family.
I always feel like these services are designed wrong. You want to be able to have multiple identities for different people, but having one organization that can associate them all with one another defeats a lot of the purpose of that. Especially if you're using it for anything that could get you into real trouble if e.g. someone were to break into that service and obtain or publicly disclose all the associations, like democracy activists in oppressive countries.
You can always create completely separate accounts and then use them over Tor one at a time blah blah blah, but that's a huge usability failure. What you really want is a UI that allows you to sign in to multiple accounts without the server knowing they're all the same person (which means native software, probably with something like Tor automatically using separate circuits for each account), and then allows you to seamlessly receive messages for any of them and clearly delineates which account you're sending from when you post something.
This becomes exceedingly complex (and unintuitive enough that it's likely to cause more problems than it solves) which you consider overlapping circle membership.
that is almost exactly how Google+ has worked for some time now. Your actual identity (real name required) was your main profile, and you can set up as many pages as you like with whatever pseudonyms you want. A page functions as a Google+ identity that can follow other people or pages and can be added to other peoples' or pages' circles, so each pseudonym has a totally distinct set of circles. It's actually a pretty clever system, but the UI and language makes it somewhat unclear what do do with it all.
Much better would be if I could pick names to display for other people. That way when my friend chooses a silly nonsense pseudonym I can replace it with the name I want to see.
I suspect the outrage had more to do with signalling than the specific issue of pseudonyms.
I also suspect that signalling will become more important for web companies than most hardware companies, because I am more directly affected by what happens behind the scenes with web companies than say, a skateboard manufacturer. It's difficult to infer behind the scenes - what are they doing w/ my data, etc - without using some signals, like not allowing pseudonyms.
I imagine that startups face this most dramatically, because their product is so fragile and indefinite that signalling is used to forecast where things are headed before I invest significant time and money. This goes for all kinds of signalling - how likely are they to end the product, to lose funding and shut down, to dramatically increase prices, etc.
Is this true, or did most outraged (or just indifferent, but not excited) users really dislike the pseudonym policy itself?
I disliked the pseudonym policy itself, I found it to be a puzzling policy considering how immigrant-filled the tech industry is, and Google too.
I was born in a different country, with a different name. I operate with an anglicized name, which took years to become my legal name. There was a long period where the name everyone knew me as wasn't my legal one. Nowadays my legal name isn't the same name used by family members on a different continent.
Names are fluid, they're significant but ultimately just identifiers to tell us apart. I find the notion that there is a One True Name to be laughably geocentric and completely out of place in a social network (as opposed to say, the IRS).
For me the pseudonym policy was a minor annoyance, making me wonder just how culturally homogenous a team of product people have to be to cook it up. For others it has been much more damaging - trans people outed being probably the most memorable one, though not the only case where an idiotic policy has had unexpectedly severe consequences.
The pseudonym policy combined with Google's attempts to integrate G+ into every service they offer was a real threat to the safety of at-risk individuals. There was genuine outrage.
Removing the pseudonym policy and disentangling G+ from other services will both help protect people.
> Is this true, or did most outraged (or just indifferent, but not excited) users really dislike the pseudonym policy itself?
I actually nuked my G+ account explicitly because of their pseudonym policy. When they started allowing pseudonyms a couple years back, you had to 'apply' for permission to use one. I tried adding mine, and it was denied with zero explanation or recourse. "Fuck you, Google!" I exclaimed...then I realized I was getting upset over an account on a worthless me-too that was probably not long for this world. Calmed down, nuked account, nothing of value was lost.
There were people who lost accounts that were critical to their business because Google didn't believe that their unusual real name wasn't a pseudonym. They and the people they told this story to were outraged about the policy itself.
A significant portion of disgruntled users disliked the pseudonym policy itself, either due to its direct effect on them, or its indirect effect on them due to its effect on one or more of their friends.
I am so used to using a pseudonym for every site; I didn't
even realize Goole plus didn't allow it. I disliked Google
plus when they went into my Ipad and stole a profile picture. I still
can't figure out how they did it. They didn't scrape it
off the Internet; they went into a folder and stole it.
I wish now I didn't delete it so fast. I tried to recover the picture for evidense, but to no avail.
I had no problem with the "G+ uses real names" thing since I just viewed it as another option for Facebook that never really took off. I did have an issue with them forcing everything to use a G+ profile. I quit leaving reviews in the Play Store because of that. And not that I ever really commented on YouTube videos but once that change was forced, it never even crossed my mind to comment. I think they should have kept G+ as "real names" and split all the other stuff back away so they didn't require real names. But I do understand why people want to use other names. I just never used G+ like that.
I stopped engaging with Google properties when they changes the youtube comment system and broke it in Chrome. There's some setting about external sites or something that I could go in and change to make it work, but why should I? If they can't create a comment system that works with their own browser, and double posts everything to my g+ account I don't use, why should I bother?
It was like shoving peanuts down the throat of a person with a peanut allergy. No means no.
Funny how they make it sound like it was all planned, rather than "This was stupid idea that made many, who wanted to stay anonymous, avoid using G+". I remember when G+ launched and almost everyone was criticizing this idea - maybe they should listen to the majority of potential users and G+ wouldn't be such ghost-town?
> Funny how they make it sound like it was all planned
I didn't get that at all. It read to me like "we thought this was a good idea, we think it had some benefits, but we have realized that it was ultimately a bad idea and so we are reversing it"
If I were to speculate, it has probably been in the works for months now. G+ changed leadership back in April, and the winds probably changed direction with it.
Now the handful of people who've been waiting on such a change to start using G+ can see be immediately disappointed with how half-assed it is.
I say this as someone with what seems to be an above average engagement with and opinion of G+.
Circles and communities are solid concepts that could work well, but the busted functionality for posting and commenting severely limits content and conversation.
Nobody, not even Google puts effort into G+ profiles. It's just another target for dumping links and hopefully driving some clicks back to your actual site/community.
I wanted to like Google+. Hell, I still want to like Google+. And it's still better than Facebook in some ways, IMO. But there are just a couple of nagging issues that are such big turn-offs that I can't stand visiting G+.
For one, the two-column stream layout is a steaming pile of shit with no rhyme or reason to the layout and selection of items you see. And the single-column layout wastes so much space with those huge empty spaces on either side of the stream, that it just about drives me batshit crazy.
Add in the fact that they have shown zero interest in giving the world a usable API, and no support for open standards (no RSS/Atom, no OpenSocial, no ActivityStrea.ms, no FOAF, etc.) and G+ - for me - falls so far short of its potential.
It makes me sad, as I was really hoping Google would come along and give us a truly awesome alternative to Facebook and they fumbled the ball.
Is there an opposite of "Streisand effect" ? If not then we might as well call it G+ effect.
Google took some unreasonable steps to make G+ popular that is precisely why I stopped using G+. After G+ I have not commented on any of the YoutTube videos. When Google started uploading every photo on my android device to Google+ and downloaded all PicasaWeb albums on my phone I switched to a fake Google id to be used on my phone.
I now use Flikr instead of Picasaweb (now G+).
I now have around 6 fake Google Ids just to make sure Google+ does not put all my info in 1 place.
I am waiting for the day Google will make G+ Compulsory for using Chrome.
So they got to a meeting and said: "Listen guys, if allowing nick names won't jumpstart Google+ then I don't know what will. It's either this or we'll close the damn thing." 18 months from now, we'll read about the all-along-planned integration of G+ into Gmail, Drive or YouTube :P
I think it's the reverse: the main purpose of G+ was to integrate all the services together, being a Facebook competitor was just the icing. The integration wasn't a means, it was the end itself.
They haven't really lost since they still got what they needed out of it in the end: the majority of accounts have a unified profile across services, even though G+ the site is unused.
Definitely a mistake, they took a service that wasn't working (G+), integrated, and forced it on users for services that did work. I'm curious to see what happens, because it can't just be rolled back, and I think it's removing more value than it's creating.
While a step in the right direction, Google's move to force real names AND the integration of G+ into their various services over the past few years has killed all of my goodwill towards anything Google. So, what I'm wondering is how does Google plan on rebuilding that lost goodwill? An apology is a nice gesture, but it doesn't make me trust the company. Nor does it fix any of the various screwed up UX issues due to the forced integration of G+ everywhere.
I have an anonymous identity on YouTube as well as a readily identifiable one on gmail and it's been ticking me off no end the way, it seems that, google is always trying to trick me into replacing the former with the latter on youtube.
The design tweak they did 2-3 weeks ago to the Account switcher on Youtube makes it readily apparent which Google account/gmail address the channel belongs to.
I haven't seen the "change your name" nag-dialog for some time. What bugs me the most is that I still can't comment on videos with the Youtube account event though google converted it to a Google+ account a long time ago, it's still useless.
[+] [-] debt|11 years ago|reply
They should've taken a more holistic and serious approach to bringing your offline identity online. Instead they tried to copy FB. They should've just called it Google Identity(with the same level of seriousness as Youtube's copyright protection product: Content ID) and provided real-life perks with associating say your Driver's license number with it which maybe would allow me to renew my driver's license much more quickly. I don't know. G+ is just weak.
I mean at the end of the day, they DO have your identity. I'm sure their algorithms could within a certainly small margin of error determine who I am to a reasonably high degree of probability based on nothing other than lines in a bunch of log files(DoubleClick Ad requests on various sites, YouTube video watch times, Google Searches based on time of day/location, mobile usage, etc); again, regardless of where or when or how I use Google(i.e. using igonito browsers, using a friend's phone, using a computer an internet cafe, etc.). So why not throw all that information under one umbrella, Google Identity, and provide it to me once I claim it.
They're likely able to treat online "behavior" as essentially unique online fingerprints and can just associate that with individual users; that is, they don't really need uniquely identifying data(unique IDs, usernames, etc.), they just need to watch your online activity(regardless of if you're logged in or have identifying cookies, etc.) for a while in order to identify you.
I assume it's because consumers probably aren't ready to know just how much data Google actually has on them AND how much information can be extracted from said data. It's likely pretty accurate and pretty scary.
[+] [-] x1798DE|11 years ago|reply
I know it's a bit childish, but for my pseudonymous Google account, I kept getting these notices that they were going to disable my Google+ account unless I gave them my real name, unless I could show them documentation proving that the pseudonym was my legal name, so I just found some pictures of middle fingers and that sort of thing and photoshopped them onto a photo of a license and submitted that. They give you a few chances to submit something, so I had a little fun picking out new insulting pictures for a while, until I got bored of it (which was almost instantly).
Obviously it wasn't going to have any effect other than to virtually flip off some random person being paid to check IDs, but it was at least cathartic in the face of such a stupid, stupid policy.
[+] [-] drzaiusapelord|11 years ago|reply
Apple and others have positioned itself as privacy friendly as well, which is a double whammy.
I'd love to see G+ be the seedy version of Facebook. Fake names, nudity, etc. You can't beat facebook by being facebook.
Hopefully, "real names everywhere" is a fad that is dying. The search engines and employers of the world don't need to know my every political thought or see my every vacation photo. Zuckerberg's idea of the internet exists only because its profitable for him. In every other respect its insane.
[+] [-] AVTizzle|11 years ago|reply
I disagree. Massively.
After Elon Musk, and possibly partly inspired by him, Page has driven Google to be, by far, the most ambitious tech titan in the game right now.
Looking past G+ and its nonsense (which is an ugly thing, granted.): - Loon is in motion, and in conjunction with recent drone acquisitions, will likely bring internet to currently unconnected billions. - Self-driving cars are actually happening. - The smart contact lens for glucose monitoring will change the lives of diabetics. - Investments and acquisitions in AI and Robotics speak to a MASSIVE ambition in that sphere. - The recent announcements in their consumer lines with TV, Nest, Auto, and wearables are extremely competitive.
And these are just the things we know about.
Compare all this to Apple (which I love, but a Beats acquisition, a bigger iPhone, and a watch coming? Woop-de-doo.), and Facebook (how's Slingshot doing?), it's not even the same game anymore.
To say that Google is an ugly place, or that they're "beholden to the advertising agency", is naive to the bigger picture.
[+] [-] munificent|11 years ago|reply
I thought Facebook was the seedy version of Facebook. Or has everyone already forgotten about Facebook apps, shitty viral games, the ever-shifting Facebook platform, fake likes, bogus ad impressions and all of the other shady shit?
[+] [-] bad_user|11 years ago|reply
The problem, the biggest problem with the NSA is that any US company can be coerced into whatever the NSA wants, without you or me ever finding out about it, even if the company in question wants to act in good faith and protect the privacy of its customers.
If Apple was or is coerced by the NSA to install backdoors into OS X or iOS, do you think you'll find out about it? And given the popularity of Apple's operating systems, I would be surprised if that didn't happen already.
Heck, it's not even open-source we're talking about. At least then you'd be able to inspect the source and compile and deploy your own binaries. And interestingly, I find Android to be better for the privacy/security conscious, even though it was born out of Google's desires for their ads to remain relevant in a mobile world - not because I trust Google, because I don't, but because it has less restrictions on what you can do with it, it's more transparent and it allows for forks (YMMV).
On the Real Names policy, I also hope it's a fad that is dying. What a stupid policy to begin with. I also had high hopes for G+, too bad it didn't happen.
[+] [-] frandroid|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edoloughlin|11 years ago|reply
There's a lot of sniping at Google here, but I think they deserve some kudos for using the A word in corporate communications.
[+] [-] bane|11 years ago|reply
The people at Google making these decisions aren't some 75 year old fuddy duddy luddites, they're about my age and they're running one of the most important properties in that world. Screwing up something as basic as this has just seemed so...weird. I can only imagine that the final say-so came from somebody/people who fundamentally didn't grow up with the same kind of comfort and experience I did on-line and really doesn't understand it.
But then again, my parents, who never even used a computer until the 2000s, and never even got on-line until 2003 or 2004 get it. It seems to obvious as soon as you jump on-line that you are both empowered and need to have on-line identities that you can control.
I really wonder if the people at the top are really part of the on-line world, or just completely removed from it and spend their time wondering about all these digital ants in the digital ant farm and wondering what we're all about?
[+] [-] rando289|11 years ago|reply
This announcement certainly reinforces that notion. Google+ announces as an anonymous "we", that their name policy "helped create a community made up of real people." As opposed to fake people? Anonymous people are real, so is this a reference to bots? The name policy prevented bots? No. It didn't. This is ridiculous corporate code language. So ya, pushing around their digital ants is exactly how this announcement reads.
[+] [-] GhotiFish|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a3n|11 years ago|reply
I wanted to use my real name. My legal, backed by a name change order, mononymic name.
After watching them fumble it, trying to use a space or a dot, and being told to gtfo or change it to a "real" name (and once again, fuck you very hard Google, even the TSA is able to deal with this), I left.
And now I'm looking around for the giant hole in my life that can finally be filled by G+. ... looking ... looking ...
[+] [-] eco|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AnthonyMouse|11 years ago|reply
You can always create completely separate accounts and then use them over Tor one at a time blah blah blah, but that's a huge usability failure. What you really want is a UI that allows you to sign in to multiple accounts without the server knowing they're all the same person (which means native software, probably with something like Tor automatically using separate circuits for each account), and then allows you to seamlessly receive messages for any of them and clearly delineates which account you're sending from when you post something.
[+] [-] aiiane|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notatoad|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] modeless|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dm2|11 years ago|reply
If they had that from the start and later decided to remove it, people would go insane.
[+] [-] rhizome|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevinalexbrown|11 years ago|reply
I also suspect that signalling will become more important for web companies than most hardware companies, because I am more directly affected by what happens behind the scenes with web companies than say, a skateboard manufacturer. It's difficult to infer behind the scenes - what are they doing w/ my data, etc - without using some signals, like not allowing pseudonyms.
I imagine that startups face this most dramatically, because their product is so fragile and indefinite that signalling is used to forecast where things are headed before I invest significant time and money. This goes for all kinds of signalling - how likely are they to end the product, to lose funding and shut down, to dramatically increase prices, etc.
Is this true, or did most outraged (or just indifferent, but not excited) users really dislike the pseudonym policy itself?
[+] [-] potatolicious|11 years ago|reply
I was born in a different country, with a different name. I operate with an anglicized name, which took years to become my legal name. There was a long period where the name everyone knew me as wasn't my legal one. Nowadays my legal name isn't the same name used by family members on a different continent.
Names are fluid, they're significant but ultimately just identifiers to tell us apart. I find the notion that there is a One True Name to be laughably geocentric and completely out of place in a social network (as opposed to say, the IRS).
For me the pseudonym policy was a minor annoyance, making me wonder just how culturally homogenous a team of product people have to be to cook it up. For others it has been much more damaging - trans people outed being probably the most memorable one, though not the only case where an idiotic policy has had unexpectedly severe consequences.
[+] [-] kevingadd|11 years ago|reply
Removing the pseudonym policy and disentangling G+ from other services will both help protect people.
[+] [-] mullingitover|11 years ago|reply
I actually nuked my G+ account explicitly because of their pseudonym policy. When they started allowing pseudonyms a couple years back, you had to 'apply' for permission to use one. I tried adding mine, and it was denied with zero explanation or recourse. "Fuck you, Google!" I exclaimed...then I realized I was getting upset over an account on a worthless me-too that was probably not long for this world. Calmed down, nuked account, nothing of value was lost.
[+] [-] pjc50|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aiiane|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marincounty|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pessimizer|11 years ago|reply
Was their names policy ever unclear, or are they pretending that this was all just a misunderstanding?
[+] [-] zyxley|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aiiane|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snogglethorpe|11 years ago|reply
[and as noted in other comments, it allows mononyms as well, for everybody]
[+] [-] vacri|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jack-r-abbit|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bane|11 years ago|reply
It was like shoving peanuts down the throat of a person with a peanut allergy. No means no.
[+] [-] pkorzeniewski|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hsod|11 years ago|reply
I didn't get that at all. It read to me like "we thought this was a good idea, we think it had some benefits, but we have realized that it was ultimately a bad idea and so we are reversing it"
[+] [-] bduerst|11 years ago|reply
[1] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/googles-top-social-networking...
[+] [-] incision|11 years ago|reply
I say this as someone with what seems to be an above average engagement with and opinion of G+.
Circles and communities are solid concepts that could work well, but the busted functionality for posting and commenting severely limits content and conversation.
Nobody, not even Google puts effort into G+ profiles. It's just another target for dumping links and hopefully driving some clicks back to your actual site/community.
[+] [-] thristian|11 years ago|reply
Or they could, if I hadn't deleted my G+ profile a year or two ago, in favour of just hanging out with them in the original venues I met them in.
[+] [-] mindcrime|11 years ago|reply
For one, the two-column stream layout is a steaming pile of shit with no rhyme or reason to the layout and selection of items you see. And the single-column layout wastes so much space with those huge empty spaces on either side of the stream, that it just about drives me batshit crazy.
Add in the fact that they have shown zero interest in giving the world a usable API, and no support for open standards (no RSS/Atom, no OpenSocial, no ActivityStrea.ms, no FOAF, etc.) and G+ - for me - falls so far short of its potential.
It makes me sad, as I was really hoping Google would come along and give us a truly awesome alternative to Facebook and they fumbled the ball.
[+] [-] tn13|11 years ago|reply
Google took some unreasonable steps to make G+ popular that is precisely why I stopped using G+. After G+ I have not commented on any of the YoutTube videos. When Google started uploading every photo on my android device to Google+ and downloaded all PicasaWeb albums on my phone I switched to a fake Google id to be used on my phone. I now use Flikr instead of Picasaweb (now G+).
I now have around 6 fake Google Ids just to make sure Google+ does not put all my info in 1 place.
I am waiting for the day Google will make G+ Compulsory for using Chrome.
[+] [-] vidarh|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] f055|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shooti|11 years ago|reply
They haven't really lost since they still got what they needed out of it in the end: the majority of accounts have a unified profile across services, even though G+ the site is unused.
[+] [-] Throwaway823|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frandroid|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hysan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barking|11 years ago|reply
Will this end now too?
[+] [-] Shooti|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hereonbusiness|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dcc1|11 years ago|reply
When it reality it seems like this is a last ditch attempt to save the wreck that google+ has become.