The Great Google Goat Rodeo

http://blog.markwunsch.com/post/50588412660/on-google

by leonegresima • 13 years ago

60 51 13 years ago

blog.markwunsch.com

Based on the title, I assumed this was referring to Google's ACTUAL goat rodeo: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/mowing-with-goats.htm...

ndesaulniers• 13 years ago

Or the goat teleporter: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=31482

samspenc2• 13 years ago

This is actually a really well-written and balanced piece, and not just a mindless "Google is Evil" rant.

aforty• 13 years ago

Don't you know you get down voted for agreeing with the author?

endtime4• 13 years ago

I downvoted him because it's so unclear whether he was being sarcastic that the comment adds no value.

mankyd2• 13 years ago

"Their design ability might be improving, but again and again they show a lack of editing — they lack the ability to be selective about their product portfolio." This statement seems strange to me, being as the the prior paragraphs were about Google shuttering many of their products.

Google may not have historically had great "editing" but they seem to be getting there. They're discontinuing products that they don't think will succeed, exactly what "editing" sounds like to me.

jtbigwoo3• 13 years ago

Editing takes place before publishing, not after. A newspaper that prints a dozen retractions per day is not well edited.

mankyd2• 13 years ago

A fair point, but as they learn to edit, they can't leave what they consider to be unsuccessful products in place either. Unlike publishing, product development isn't static.

tomkarlo2• 13 years ago

Two of the biggest data points for editing products - their popularity and growth rate - don't exist before you launch. I'm sure Google doesn't launch products it believes will be unpopular, so whatever launches and ends up unpopular, that data point was a surprise. It would be nice if you could tell which products will take off before you build them - it would save everyone a lot of trouble.

cageface• 13 years ago

Google is attacked on one hand for having too many products and on the other hand for discontinuing products. I guess when you're as dominant as Google is now critics will always find something to criticize.

The only thing in this piece I agree with is that Google+ is creepy and I don't like having it forced on me when I want to use their other products. Google's made a Faustian bargain here in their panic over Facebook and it seems to be corrupting them from the inside.

CosmicShadow• 13 years ago

Needs more goats.

rasterizer3• 13 years ago

I'm not quite sure what the author is going on about in that post: 'google is good but they make money so they're not good', 'google makes lots of products, then kills some of them so they're evil', 'google design is not perfect so I don't like them'.

It seems like he started from the assumption that Google is evil then he went rambling around that without making a coherent argument.

And I think by "rodeo" he meant IO? it's gibberish.

jtbigwoo3• 13 years ago

"Goat rodeo" is slang for a particularly chaotic situation where nobody's in charge and everybody's going in different directions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goat_rodeo

rasterizer3• 13 years ago

I see, then no convincing case was made to support that unless if you count the lament about experimentation and their numerous products, and no reasonable connection was made between that and 'evilness'.

gammarator• 13 years ago

I agree: it's anticompetitive to give increased search prominence to sites willing to link to a Google+ profile.

tomkarlo2• 13 years ago

What's the alternative? It's not like FB is going to open up their social graph data so Google can use it to improve search results. I believe that issue was discussed when G+ results first showed up in search. For what it's worth, Facebook is also out there trying to compete on search using its social graph information, which is what the recent Zuckerberg announcements talked about.

rasterizer3• 13 years ago

Oh, so this is about a "Gilt" employee being peeved about the presentation featuring the "Google+ Sign In" integration with "Fancy"(a competitor?)?

Well no, it's not anti competitive because when a user logs into a service she implicitly expresses interest in it, making it more relevant to her in a search scenario, and since it's personalised that "prominence" is unique to said user.

fraserharris• 13 years ago

Google doesn't force you to use Google+ as a social network, it forces you to create a profile so it can unify identity across Google accounts.

jessaustin3• 13 years ago

Who wants this? Are Google so hopeless in strategy that they have to borrow from Facebook?

lawdawg4• 13 years ago

Do you have a better solution for unifying identity across Google accounts? If your opinion is that separate products should have separate accounts and credentials then we will just have to agree to disagree. I can understand why that would be someone's preference, but I can't understand why someone would bash a company that has the desire to utilize a single profile/account for all of their products.

rm9993• 13 years ago

I clicked a hackernews link yesterday and forgot about the tab for an hour. When I finally got to it I was somewhat shocked to see it was a google+ page that automatically signed me into hangouts, where several tried to chat with me. About half my google plus home screen area is devoted to chat or attempts at convincing me to upload a profile picture or attempts at convincing me to find more friends.

I'm sure if I was a regular user of google+ I'd turn off many of its social features, but by default it's at least as social as facebook. I agree ultimately its "lowest common denominator" purpose is a unifying platform for google, but as a heavy google user who isn't looking for another social network (which describes a lot of people out there) google+ is way too social. It's simply something I want to avoid, yet I feel like I'm forced to interact with it too much.

spankalee2• 13 years ago

Disclaimer: I work for the big G

Exactly. Google needs a way to identify and canonicalize people and organizations. I think they've tried various automated and smart techniques to limited success, and it's much easier to say that if you create a profile so that you tell us what your identity is and what your websites are, then we can attribute your work in searches much better. You don't ever have to use G+ the web site after that.

I think that there's a basic misunderstanding of what G+ is, even inside Google, and it's our fault for not making it more clear. Maybe things needed different names.

Google+ is really three main things:

At it's core G+ is an identity service. It knows who you are because you have a profile. Authorship requires this I guess.

Then it's a sharing service. Google needed a way to enable sharing in all it's products.

Finally, it's a web site with a social stream.

It's possible they should have stuck with "Google Profile" for the first part, and then the author might not be so upset that Google needs some information to attribute correctly.

Also, it'd be ideal if there were standards for these things. Google definitely used to go more that route, like Open Social, but those attempts failed against proprietary systems like Facebook. I think things are just moving to fast right now for the slow process of standardization to be competitive. I hope that when certain _features_ of identity, sharing, messaging, etc. standardize again, then new protocols can be standardized around those features. New XMPP extensions, or an entirely new protocol, to support the features of Hangouts would be great for example. A system for securely asserting identity and profile information (not log-ins) in the way that people use Twitter, Facebook and G+ would be wonderful too.

Sven72• 13 years ago

Feature request: Open up google search (API access). Create a marketplace around that index, that no one else on the planet has any hope of duplicating.

ronilan• 13 years ago

> Google needs a way to identify and canonicalize people and organizations

No. Wants. Google wants to have a way to identify and canonicalize people and organizations. It is an understood desire. But it is not a need.

iamwil• 13 years ago

Wait. But that's what innovation cycle looks like. You try a bunch of stuff, and most of it fails.

lawdawg4• 13 years ago

Seriously, name me one successful company that doesn't have a host of failures and cancelled products attached to their name.

I much prefer Google launch a ton of products and only focuses on the one's that "stick" because I know they will generally create an incredibly good product once they are fully invested in it (see Android, Chrome, GMail, Docs, Analytics, etc).

jessaustin3• 13 years ago

Well then I certainly hope that "Plus" will be recognized as a failure sooner rather than later, because as TFA states that crap is getting spread over all the good stuff Google does. When normal people start using other search engines and maps to avoid the Plus hassles, Google should know they are damaging the franchise.

Intermernet• 13 years ago

This is probably an unpopular point of view, but:

I actually agree with author (despite his going into a rant in the latter part of the article) about the horribleness of needing a Google+ account to interact with most of Google's services these days (I'm wondering if any clueless fool in their marketing/sales dept. has suggested G+ login for search yet...), but I actually quite like Google+ .

It's, IMHO, miles in front of the competition in regards to large communities, but, admittedly, fails on the actual social stuff (friends, family etc.). But, as I see it, the only reason they fail at this is due to the overwhelming dominance of Facebook.

I now only use FB for communication with overseas (and far away, easy if you're in Australia) friends. Most of my other online community social behaviour is done through G+

Just my 2 cents (with inflation)

lawdawg4• 13 years ago

It astonishes me that people don't have an issue with this:

> I need a Google account to interact with most of Google's services these days.

but seem to have major issues with this:

> I need a Google+ account to interact with most of Google's services these days.

Why do people have such a hard time accepting that Google+ accounts are a natural progression of Google's account management (and eventually will replace the old, fragmented Google, Youtube, whatever account system)? Sure, it has a companion social networking site, and requires a real name (or what that looks like one), but that requirement could have been applied to regular Google accounts as well and I highly doubt we would still see the amount of complaining we see today about Google+ accounts.

MostAwesomeDude• 13 years ago

Whatever you say, Mr. Lawdawg. What a great last name; I wish I could have one like that.

corresation• 13 years ago

This is exactly my confusion about this parade of complaints. Google Account --> Google+ Account. Nothing about that says that you ever have to use a single aspect of Google+ the Facebook-competitor, and your empty profile can sit doing nothing. I do not understand the outrage simply that it exists.

mynewwork• 13 years ago

I have a hard time accepting it, because it's not a 'natural progression' at all, it's forcing me into a headache I don't want.

Gmail is the best free email, and GTalk was convenient instant messaging. Both great, I used them daily. Using these services doesn't imply that I want a public profile, that I want a social network, that I want to share anything or that I want the constant hassle of setting privacy settings, then resetting them every month when they change or new features are added which I'm auto-enrolled into.

I don't want searching for my name to show a Google+ profile. I don't want videos I've watched, articles I've read or links I've clicked to appear in a stream/wall/circle/feed. I've had to go through facebook's privacy settings a dozen times because they keep changing or adding features which default all users to maximum-sharing. Google is too important for me to have to worry about accidentally broadcasting all my interactions with various google services to the world or my contacts.

skw• 13 years ago

This article is kinda silly. Yes google owns everything but if they can afford to run a bunch of pilot projects that ultimately fail, what's the problem? These products can be re-imagined in more effective ways. Also allowing different teams to house their projects in various places (google code, github..) is awesome. Yes I agree things are a little bit all over the place, but I would possibly want to work at Google.

Maybe my perspective is skewed, as I don't use many google frameworks or resources to develop with...

SideburnsOfDoom• 13 years ago

So Google is a big diverse company, it is not one thing. People are still making the same mistake about e.g. Microsoft.

cromwellian2• 13 years ago

Google+ = Single Sign On across Google Products

Plus

Single Access-Control-List/Rolodex/Address Book Across Google Products

Plus

A social stream site that you can decide to use or not.

The first two are absolute needs. Having a separate set of credentials and identity for GMail, Drive, YouTube, Play, Maps, et al is anti-user and highly annoying. (you can still have multiple identities if you wish by creating separate accounts). When I share documents on Drive, or content from Play, or some other function that requires me to curate a list or group of people, why not have this span services as well?

Now, I sympathize a lot with the notion that these things should be open and federated and not siloed to Google or Facebook. But remember, Google tried OpenID/OAuth/WebFinger/ActivityStreams.ms/PuSH, et al early on, and got crushed by Facebook, and to some extent, all of that lost time on OpenSocial and Buzz allowed Facebook to get further entrenched as the Web's identity provider. Facebook connect is now on every site, and IMHO, it's a lot more onerous than G+ profiles when it comes to privacy.

Long long ago, we had a federated vision of stuff like LDAP + ACAP for distributed identity and profile configuration. If only we could get back to the days of IETF collaboration on fundamental features like this.

saurik• 13 years ago

Google already has single sign-on between all Google products... you make it sound like they are just getting around to this with G+. They have always had a single set of credentials and identity for all of the services you call out, including YouTube (which is a little sketchier as they purchased it, with existing accounts, and so there is an account import and attachment process: but once you've done that, you've always been able to use your Google account to sign in to it).

cromwellian2• 13 years ago

They had single sign-on, but they did not have a unified data-model profile as the TOS/privacy policies made sharing data between services iffy.

My point is, part of G+ is simply a rebranding of functionality that existed before, but now people are all upset over having to have a G+ profile, whereas before, they had a Google Profile.

Creating a Google account should imply creating a G+ account, the same way it implies provisioning Gmail, Drive, et al. If you don't like the G+ news feed, don't use it, it's as simple as that, just like if you're a Dropbox user, don't bother using the free GDrive storage.

The Great Google Goat Rodeo

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