Google+ broke our trust

http://www.zdnet.com/thanks-for-nothing-jerkface-7000030306/

by andor • 12 years ago

361 238 12 years ago

zdnet.com

sbarre• 12 years ago

Is it even possible to reverse course on the G+ integrations now?

Would Google even want to, even if everyone agreed it was a bad idea in the first place?

6cxs2hd6• 12 years ago

That's an interesting question.

I can imagine this push resulted in some positive refactoring of Google's internal systems, which they would like to retain.

However I can also imagine it resulted in some layers of duct tape (very much like the rush job after a merger or acquisition), which they'd love to rip off.

It would be interesting to hear a Google insider talk about this. Meanwhile, my guess would be it's a mix of the above, and they'll be stuck with that mix for years to come.

toyg• 12 years ago

Considering that the real-name policy is just that, a policy (albeit an automatically-enforced one), I don't see what technical problems would arise from its unilateral revocation. Just disable the flagging and be on your merry way.

The thing is, I suspect Google leadership still don't really see the policy as a problem. Brin said his involvement was a mistake -- because it tainted his image and his credentials, not because the policy itself was wrong. I suspect he still sees it as dirty work that somebody has to do, just not himself.

rasz_pl• 12 years ago

Do you realize how much more advertisers are willing to pay for targeted campaigns? That real identity G+ policy wasnt to stop trolls or some other bullshit, it was to build better database.

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

I wish both Google and Microsoft would understand that you can't force change down users' throats. It needs to come naturally. They need to want it, and have it grow organically.

Sure, forcing them will definitely bring you bigger "adoption" (for lack of a better word) faster, but it will also build up a lot of resentment, potentially negating any advantage you might have from ramming the change through, in the long run.

A lot of people didn't understand Twitter in the first 3+ years, but it still managed to grow organically, because people wanted to join it over the years. Google tried to push Google+ to its 1 billion users within 2 years, with seemingly very little advantage for the users. What did they expect?

Same for Microsoft when it comes to pushing Metro to PC users who have been perfectly happy with their PC interface, but Microsoft wanted to force them to use a tablet interface on a PC. Why? Because Microsoft said so, and because they would get to flash "bigger numbers" to developers for "Metro users". The actual experience of the user on a desktop was barely a distant concern.

If you're a big corporation, and you can't grow a new business organically, then tough luck. Maybe you shouldn't be in that market then.

macspoofing• 12 years ago

I wish both Google and Microsoft AND Apple ...

Right!?

Htsthbjig2• 12 years ago

Yeah, the new iOS uses the iCloud on American soil for all your pictures and videos by default...

brudgers• 12 years ago

I wish both Google and Microsoft would understand that you can't force change down users' throat

Innovation is a funny thing, and interestingly, forcing change on end users is something for which Apple regularly receives praise. Or as Henry Ford pointed out, people wanted faster horses. Few people probably wanted rush hour gridlock either.

Denonymization of the internet had already happened long before G÷. Cookies and tracking data were collected for more than a decade before its rollout. G÷ just made it explicit, and Apple was already ahead via iOS and the app store and the SIM cards in all those phones. Microsoft was barely a step behind them, and for me? Well I think the Metro interface has huge advantage over WIMP. It's cloud identity integration that drove me from Windows 8. Installation was the Oh-Shit moment.

silverbax882• 12 years ago

Except people are ignoring the significant market growth slowdown that Apple has lost since Job's departure. A lot of old school Apple-friendly press always cheer each Apple release, but the reality is Apple hasn't really been "Apple" for some time. You have to remember that all of the news Apple released last week doesn't matter to the average user/consumer. The biggest news from Apple over the last 3 years to the average consumer was that they bought Beats headphones.

silverbax882• 12 years ago

I cannot applaud your comments enough. Microsoft has absolutely lost their mind trying to push the Windows 8 tablet interface on desktop users; Google+ integration is one of the biggest threats to user engagements (and personal safety in many cases). On one hand I see that their missteps create opportunity for new companies; but on the other hand, it worries me about the lack of alternatives and what it means if I can't use an OS or social network that doesn't want to absolutely fuck me over.

Honestly, all we need is a search engine that returns decent results and doesn't try to tell the world who we are (DuckDuckGo) and a social network that lets us only communicate the way we want, to who we want (???).

asdfologist3• 12 years ago

I disagree. Facebook forces changes upon users all the time, with success. For example, the news feed was suddenly forced on everyone, even amid much protest. The difference between FB and Google+ is that most users end up liking FB's changes, whereas that can't be said of Google+.

frostmatthew2• 12 years ago

The difference between FB and Google+ is that most users end up liking FB's changes, whereas that can't be said of Google+.

There's a difference between product changes (e.g. Facebook's news feed) and policy changes (e.g. forcing Google+ use for other Google products). People aren't upset with Google because they changed anything about G+, it's because they changed everything else for G+.

joezydeco2• 12 years ago

Shareholders and analysts don't have the patience for a 3-year organic rampup. They want promises and returns by the end of the quarter. This is what happens when you go public.

tabio4• 12 years ago

3 people together hold enough voting power to make all decisions, and those 3 people wrote in their S-1 that they have no intention to ever listen to shareholders and analysts.

drdaeman2• 12 years ago

understand that you can't force change down users' throats

Actually, they can. When you are Google/Microsoft/Facebook/etc-grade oligopolist it requires quite extraordinary changes to ward off your users who are already hooked to your services. I.e. the changes that actually prevent them from further using the service, or make transition to another one (if there's any) less painful than managing to live within the new environment.

diminish• 12 years ago

As an intensive user, everywhere on Google products, I feel the Microsoftization. This includes documentation with corporate jargon, the bloated and confusing Hangout fiasco, the frustrating way to connect multiple identities together.

Did they hire any corporate UX/UI/branding/marketing/documentation guys from Redmond recently, after Larry Page's CEOship?

cliveowen• 12 years ago

It's an inescapable reality: companies grow and grow bloated and complacent. It happened to IBM and Microsoft, it happened to Google and it's happening now for Facebook. Once corporate mentality sets in the company's soul is gone.

spodek2• 12 years ago

I saw Craig Newmark of Craig's List speak once after the late 90s bubble burst. He said people kept asking him why he didn't take up the many opportunities to make money he could have -- just one small ad on each page could have made hundreds of millions of dollars with hardly any change to the user experience. He calmly pointed out how many of them went bankrupt and had to change their ways. He seemed more than content with a site that delivered what its users wanted.

I'm sure they've made blunders along the way, but as far as I can tell they've remained true to their original ways. Wikipedia says they have a staff of 28.

wpietri2• 12 years ago

My theory is that it involves excessively mediated reality. When Google was two guys, most of the people they talked to were not Google people. Now, my guess is that 95% of their conversations are with people they pay. Those people are more likely to tell them good things than bad things. And those people also think Google is pretty swell, because these who don't leave Google. And at Larry and Sergey's level, they probably aren't within three layers of external reality.

There's a diagnostic term: Acquired Situational Narcissism[1]. Basically, when a celebrity spends all their time around people who act like the celebrity is the most important person in the world, then they too start to believe it. I think there's a corporate version of that.

Imagine it: You created Google. You can buy anything. Everybody you spend time around defers to you. Of course you'd think you could do a better job of designing a social network than Facebook; half of humanity thinks that. The problem is that people will now let you do that.

Once you've done it, your very mediated reality makes it hard to know you've screwed up. Because everybody you talk to needs you to like them. Most of those people have gotten promoted a number of times, meaning they are very good at being liked by their bosses. And who doesn't like good news, especially about a pet project?

I'm not sure it's inescapable, but it certainly is the very common outcome.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism#Acquired_situational...

cromwellian3• 12 years ago

Google has also hired a huge number of Microsoft people, that's going to have an effect on company culture. As well as consultant types from places like Mackenzie, Accenture, etc.

That's the problem with growing fast, hiring like crazy, acquiring like crazy, is that you don't have enough time to assimilate people into company culture properly.

crazychrome• 12 years ago

exactly. Larry Page reminds me of Steve Ballmer's remark on iPhone. I think Steve Ballmer is an excellent man, except having no idea about design: "... windows phone can DO email...". Larry Page thought Google can DO social, and he gets G+.

kmfrk• 12 years ago

I recently had to use YouTube for a project, and it's marketers and "audience engagement" all the way down. Their Playbook is probably the best example of the inmates running the asylum: https://www.youtube.com/yt/playbook/.

mattryanharris• 12 years ago

As a YouTuber for six years I can't tell you how depressing its been to watch this shit happen.

I remember attending my first VidCon, I was 18 and just graduated on high school and my first YouTube channel basically got fucked due to the fact my Adsense getting disabled (RIGHT BEFORE MY FIRST PAYCHECK WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SENT).

When I went to talk to the YouTube staff attending the event they informed me that it was out of their hands and that there was nothing they could do which is bullshit considering the exact same thing happened to a bigger YouTuber and it was fixed within a day.

YouTube sees their big channels as the example to follow - if it works for them, it must work for everyone. They gave out the Playbooks at the last VidCon in physical form and re-reading them just make sick because its not about making great content, its about how to make the most money.

They encourage you to try to hook your audience in the first 15 seconds, use all caps in your video titles BECAUSE THIS GRABS THE AUDIENCE'S ATTENTION BY THE BALLS APPARENTLY, they want you to remember to make sure you remind them to always like comment and subscribe, and try to encourage discussion by posing questions to your audience.

I understand they want content creators making money but the least they could do is actually help us rather than just pat us on the back and lie to us "Yea, these changes are gonna help grow your channel" is what we hear every time there's a new YouTube layout implemented. My first VidCon was when they announced Cosmic Panda, with every update we get less and less. I think with Google+ we were all just kind of fed up with taking the crap Google fed us and actually got mad about it.

Everyone saw this as YouTubers being angsty and hostile for no reason when in reality friends of mine who make their livings off their YouTube were seeing their views drop at least 30% minimum. Some of my friends saw 50-60% drop in views which caused some of them to rethink what they were gonna do, a few quit because they just couldn't pay the bills anymore.

YouTube needs to understand that they're not just messing with a users experience but they're also messing with people's livelihoods. They don't seem to get that, they never have.

Sorry for the rant, I needed to vent.

frostmatthew2• 12 years ago

Did they hire any corporate UX/UI/branding/marketing/documentation guys from Redmond recently, after Larry Page's CEOship?

Vic Gundotra was at Microsoft prior to joining Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vic_Gundotra

raverbashing• 12 years ago

That explains a lot

ktran03• 12 years ago

Same sentiments here.

Microsoft was the admirable company of the 90's for me, and more recently it's Apple and Google. I really hope Google doesn't continue on this path, though it seems to be unavoidable in some ways.

Don't be evil was a good start, it's too bad the motto is inversely proportional to capitalistic gains.

rumbler• 12 years ago

If you ask old people, they will tell you the same story, but about IBM. Every generation has its great, innovative tech company turned evil mastermind story. It seems to be hard to avoid. I wonder who will be next.

webmaven• 12 years ago

Exactly when do you think IBM 'turned evil mastermind'?

Because for me, that was in 1933: http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

afarrell• 12 years ago

For some reason, my email address is now linked to a name that is not mine. I've not yet bothered to figure out how to change it, but I wish for the sake of trans people that this error had been more common.

taejo2• 12 years ago

Gmail insists on respelling the name of one of my contacts; it's only one letter different, but it's slightly embarrassing that I seem not to know his name after eight years of working together.

maxerickson2• 12 years ago

Having never experienced anything like this from Gmail, I wonder if you have the misspelling stored in a contact.

I even have a sort of contrary anecdote, I added an accent to a contact name a few years ago and it has always just worked.

Htsthbjig2• 12 years ago

What made Google special in the past was having principles and walking the talk.

Those days when Altavista wanted to force people into watching noisy pop up advertisements with annoying colors before you could search anything, and this small company decided to just display text.

The days when everybody was onto portals to make the web enclosed inside gatekeepers hand and Google brought freedom.

Those days are over. Just the other day I had them trying to change my name in gmail and complete the information I gave them when gmail was invite only like my birthday or a picture of me.

When I refused I had them INSULTING ME!! Something alike "it seems you are so alone". Wow, if you don't use their "social private web", or any other social site you are alone, even if you have a blog with thousands of people visiting, and real friends you can talk, kiss or hug.

I am looking for Google alternatives right now.

coldtea• 12 years ago

What made Google special in the past was having principles and walking the talk.

Principles? BS. What made Google special in the past was it started as an underdog (back in the day) and wanted to get people to get to using it (not just for search, but for several products it unveilled, to expand their fall-back options).

After it got people by the balls with Search, Gmail and Android, it's "so long, suckers".

pessimizer7• 12 years ago

As I say until people get sick of hearing it, google had:

1) principles and respect for its users, 2) great mathematical chops, and 3) clean UI.

1) is gone, and everybody has 2) and 3) now. Other than a moral center Google has never offered me anything that I couldn't get somewhere else. At least then, before alternate providers were driven out of business.

Right now, I have DDG as my moral search engine. Hopefully, one day, there will be a place for moral email or social.

joeevans10004• 12 years ago

I downloaded the new Firefox and made DuckDuckGo my default search engine in it, and it's actually working great. I figure I'll keep chrome going as well, but I'm starting the weaning process. The new Firefox is much better than the one out a couple years ago. Actually, it's very good. The google+ nagging freaked me out, as well as the fact that I somehow have thought it's been ok for them to scan.

adwf2• 12 years ago

News flash: Company co-founder and senior executive publicly supports own products!

adam744• 12 years ago

News flash: Sergey now thinks that his working so closely on Google+ was a mistake.

adwf2• 12 years ago

Now that it's publicly dead in the water sure. But saying anything negative about your own products while they're still trying to push it as the next big thing? It'll never happen. Any executive that tried would be fired or sidelined. Public comments like that are purely a matter of marketing and PR, individuals (particularly senior ones) will always back the company message.

This is why you never hear anything from Microsoft other than Windows8 is great! Or alternatively, you never hear anything from Apple at all. It's the PR department's job, not the senior execs.

wfjackson• 12 years ago

If there's one video that shows off the purposefully confusing Google+ and Youtube integration mess, its this one of a woman literally crying because of it.

Warning: Strong language

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccxiwu4MaJs

cbellet• 12 years ago

Hey, I can find videos of people angry at about anything that exists.

Apple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFOx81Lm34c Facebook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhPzx2KLoUg Nature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJNqn-Y3pdY

Ah! Why is it so hard to make everyone happy?

rando2892• 12 years ago

Hey, I can find videos of people angry at about anything that exists.

Actually, you can't, and your post is a bit rediculous.

For "features of websites that are widely used", how many of them are part of youtube crying videos? Probably ~0.0001% and it certainly could be useful to call one out.

dm24• 12 years ago

There is a pretty large warning when you go to delete your Google+ account https://plus.google.com/downgrade/

It seems that a deleted YouTube channel can still be recovered and that the only thing that's lost is the views, private messages, and comments.

The reason this lady deleted her account was that she was tired of receiving notifications, that setting can be changed here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/settings

rando2892• 12 years ago

Why would someone make a video of themselves crying and post it on the internet?

More interesting: Why would someone make a well writtenish comment on the internet that is quite negative toward someone crying on the internet?

edit: you edited the quote out from underneath me. Good call imo.

motters• 12 years ago

I can sympathize with the woman in the video because I also always kept declining to link my YouTube login to my G+ login. I'm also considering deleting my Google account, and I expect that due to the horrible Microsoft-style integration once I do that anything I might have uploaded to YouTube will also disappear.

Pxtl3• 12 years ago

I'm going to be a bit contrarian here: Google should have forced the issue and made it less painful. This "decline decline decline" business was a freaking embarrassment.

The correct approach is "Your youtube account is now part of your Google account. Create a Google account if you haven't got one already for this. If you need to use a pseudonym, you can attach a pseudonym to your Google account and that will carry your Youtube information".

No declining, because that was a soft promise that Google had trouble keeping.

jd75• 12 years ago

I didn't link my ID's, then one day I clicked the wrong button and ended up using YouTube with my real, full name (gross!). I looked for my playlist containing all the private videos I'd uploaded of my small children and it was gone!

I found the playlist later under my other, weird shadow YouTube account, but in the moment when I thought all the videos of my son's first years were gone (I do have backups... somewhere), I can easily imagine crying my eyes out.

joeevans10004• 12 years ago

I guess I can't comment on the video to support her.

I don't have google+.

In this case, google is creating a system where eventually the only discussion that can go on within the system will be by those who have google+. Those who disagree with google+ enough to not have it will not be able to participate in the discussion. I'm sure there are places and ways one can, but not in the comments to this youtube video.

johnchristopher• 12 years ago

Just to be clear:

OPINION: One month after creator and leader of Google+, Vic Gundotra, quietly quit, Google chief Sergey Brin told a conference audience last week that involvement in Google+ was "a mistake." He made the exact opposite statement in 2011.

Whose involvement are we talking about here ? Brin, Gundotra or Google ?

If only someone could have stepped in and course-corrected Google+.
Oh, right. Someone could have.
The same someone that just told the world, "heh, oops" and walked away to go retreat back into himself, and play with his cars.

Is that someone Brin (who could have and has plenty of money to buy cars) or Gundotra (who could have and left the company a month ago - with enough money to play with cars I suppose) ?

(sorry for hand walking me but the style is confusing me)

maxerickson2• 12 years ago

I read it as being aimed at Brin.

It's sort of lazy and cheap to mostly use his hindsight in an article criticizing him. On the other hand, I guess there was plenty said at the time that called the real name policy a mistake.

keerthiko• 12 years ago

It was ambiguous to me too, stylistically.

I don't know if Vic had any sort of popular affinity or affiliation with cars, so I construed it as referring to Brin and Google's pet self-driving vehicle projects (his cars), after having said "Google+ was a mistake" (heh, oops).

skj• 12 years ago

I think the cars refer to self-driving cars, which is a Google X project (Sergey runs Google X).

adam744• 12 years ago

I miss the days of Google Labs and twenty percent time.

tomrod2• 12 years ago

Me too. I remember being excited about seeing what Google's next big thing was. I lost hope when Reader was shut down.

LoganCale• 12 years ago

The Real Name policy was the beginning of the end for me, Reader being shut down made me lose interest in all new Google products, and Snowden made me stop using some of the ones I already had been.

tomrod2• 12 years ago

I've been using G+ consistently for a week now after signing off from a competing social network. I thoroughly enjoy it so far. Why is G+ dead in the water?

EDIT: Fatfingered a random exclamation point

TheLoneWolfling• 12 years ago

Forced lack of anonymity and forced integration.

lbotos• 12 years ago

I think most people feel Google's incessant need to push it on every product leads to overexposure and this hate of G+. To further that, I closed my G+ account a few months ago due to inactivity. You'd better believe that the whole process made it sound like I was going to lose access to my email, my youtube account, etc. It wasn't a positive experience.

Rapzid• 12 years ago

They dropped the ball on nearly every major integration in some spectacular fashion, essentially. Be it forced integration, loosing anonymity, or botching up the g-talk's chat history.

The chat history bit me. They used to have a really nice chat history that integrated into the email seamlessly and had good export options. It even worked through IMAP. Unfortunately that all disappeared when they made g-talk hangouts. Essentially it was a duct-tape job like mentioned above. Apparently their storage back-end is quite different and they didn't put the work in to allow for easy retrieval and review of full chat histories. Unfortunately I needed a mass of chat histories(a year) for Visa purposes and the switch was about two thirds in. Retrieving the newer stuff became a part time job :|

Other than that I kinda like G+. I also like real identity movement. Eventually I believe that will be a big differentiator for swaths of the internet. The civil, real name sites. And the seedy, anonymous underbelly.

saraid2165• 12 years ago

People say that G+ is dead in the water in order to create a tangential economic justification for their actual complaint.

Their actual complaint tends to be valid, whereas their claim about the prospects of G+ is generally bullshit.

pistle• 12 years ago

That's a lot of counterhate. Not wholly unwarranted, but severely one-sided.

Corporate products are not for dissidents or the privacy-focused. Period. The end. You need to find alts designed to be private and/or pay to not be subsidized for the profitizing of YOU - whoever you are or want to be.

Google wants to fold you into their walled garden by tilting all their products towards each other. Shocking. I can't think of any other... oh yeah right... EVERY massive tech company does this. Otherwise one of the other massive tech companies will eat their lunch within 10 years. You are the frog. They are the scorpion.

Also, part of force g+ is what you are seeing grow widely. Enough people are harmed or disgusted with the level of gaming of anonymity that the trolls have achieved that the real identity movement has grown pretty quickly.

I doubt large corporate interests will be able to find it profitable, over any minimally significant span of time, to preserve privacy and be a platform for social change/justice. The unintended consequence is also being a platform for the lulz. Don't be evil meets don't be bankrupt. If your platform is a cesspool, nobody will pay to swim there.

vidarh9• 12 years ago

A lot of this hate presumably stems from Google's "Don't be evil". Google has been given a lot of trust. They then demonstrated very clearly that they can't be trusted to care at all, and are prepared to go as far as putting users lives at risk over users names.

Also, part of force g+ is what you are seeing grow widely. Enough people are harmed or disgusted with the level of gaming of anonymity that the trolls have achieved that the real identity movement has grown pretty quickly.

So give people options to block people who don't use a real name (but realise that for the vast majority of G+ users you have no idea if they use their real name vs. just use a name that sounds real enough to not get flagged by Google) from being able to comment on your posts. That would address the concern of people who have a problem with anonymous or pseudonymous posts, without forcing such a policy on other subsets of users where it in many cases is a problem. Trans users and political dissidents is just a couple of the worst affected.

There are many sub-cultures where handles are more common than real name - there are hundreds of people I would recognize by handle, from e.g. the demo scene, musicians/artists, but where I would not have clue who they are if going by their "real" name.

I doubt large corporate interests will be able to find it profitable, over any minimally significant span of time, to preserve privacy and be a platform for social change/justice.

For this reason, I expect we'll soon enough find that companies targeting certain groups of countries, like the EU, will eventually find themselves facing legal restrictions on demanding/publicizing real names on the grounds that it is deeply discriminatory against certain classes of people. I'd expect trans groups to eventually go after that if it starts becoming too difficult to use products and services without a legally recognized name.

wpietri2• 12 years ago

The corporate ideology you're describing here is very situational. The notion that all things (ethics, civic responsibility, sustainability, long-term growth) should be sacrificed on the altar of next quarter's profits is historically young. People aren't obliged to accept it.

I expect that it will pass. During the last San Francisco Gold Rush, hydraulic mining was considered a reasonable practice:

http://science.kqed.org/quest/2010/11/18/gold-rush-sediment-...

People wouldn't do that anymore here no matter how profitable it is, because we recognize the long-term costs that go with the short-term gains. Capitalism is a fine way to structure certain socially beneficial economic exchanges, but it makes a poor religion.

raldi5• 12 years ago

With Google+, it became clear that we were all little more than webs of flesh spun over packages of saleable data.

What data is allegedly being sold, and who is Google selling it to?

adam744• 12 years ago

The data is basically what products you like or might like. They sell this to anyone who wants to advertise using Adsense.

raldi5• 12 years ago

So how would you go about purchasing a list of products I like or might like?

vidarh9• 12 years ago

I don't see anywhere where the article alleges that the data is for sale, but that it is saleable.

One way of capitalizing on that, without selling the data, is to sell access to advertise on the basis of that data.

The point is not to claim that Google is selling our data, but just another way of stating that we're the product, not the customer.

raldi5• 12 years ago

The point is to try to lump Google together with companies that literally do sell customer data, e.g., credit card providers, supermarkets, stores at the mall, magazine publishers... They literally sell your non-anonymized, non-aggregated data, period.

It's an unfair lumping because what Google does is a far cry from that.

IgorPartola3• 12 years ago

I don't get it. So Brin announces to the world that Google+ is the new sliced bread in 2011. Then he tells a small group of people that he thinks he personally should not have been involved with G+. Also the leader of the G+ project leaves (one month after the project started? One month after Brin had his candid talk recently?)

Where in this is the broken trust? What is the author actually upset about? Seems to me like in 2011 Brin and co. thought Google+ was the future. Now Brin simply is admitting that he personally might not have been the right person to take this on and perhaps it was a bad idea (not clear from the poorly written article). On top of that the author is trying to make a story out of the project leader leaving precisely because there was no story there.

I think this piece is terribly written and there is no story behind it. G+ is not my favorite product but I think this is just an outburst of anger that does not deserve our attention.

jwheeler792• 12 years ago

the point of the article is that google has lost trust, and google+ along with strange, self-serving behavior of executives is how. that much is undeniable.

IgorPartola3• 12 years ago

What was the underhanded thing that it did? If you put your real name AND sensitive info into a public system, especially one you do not understand, what do you trust will happen? What does Brin's confession of not being the best person to create a social network have to do with it?

rwmj• 12 years ago

You should probably read further than the first paragraph.

Blahah• 12 years ago

The rest of the article was just an unrelated rant about the outdated real names thing on G+.

bane5• 12 years ago

The problem was the G+ was pitched as a social network. It grew, like a cancer, into some weird meta-project that defies description, and along the way fucked over lots of people who worked very hard to maintain different identities and roles in the various on-line milieus they frequented. Sometimes it was as simple as revealing their real name to their model plane group. Other times it involved just shutting down real income generating youtube channels that people had poured lots of time and effort into (thousands of hours), or revealing to abusive ex-spouses where you lived...all without any real good reason and zero upside to the users of the various Google properties and dubious upside to Google as a business.

This was very costly for Google just on the employment front as well. Word on the street is that Google had upwards of 1,200 employees working on the G+ project. Fully burdened, that's something like $250-300m/year.

There was no upside for the entire project, for users or for google. So now, a couple $billion later, they finally realized what everybody else on the planet realized 2 years ago. They could have just surveyed users back then to find out where they were screwing up, but in typical Google fashion, that would have involved actually engaging with their users, which Google is borderline allergic to.

naterator• 12 years ago

They could have just surveyed users back then to find out where they were screwing up, but in typical Google fashion, that would have involved actually engaging with their users, which Google is borderline allergic to.

Yup. Google never grew out of that phase--the Steve Jobs Phase, I like to call it. Obviously when Google started they knew what users didn't even know they wanted. Efficient search. Great webmail. Etc. But then Google (should have) realized it was a business with customers who aren't always idiots. It did not. It still really hasn't.

tedks• 12 years ago

The problem was the G+ was pitched as a social network. It grew, like a cancer, into some weird meta-project that defies description

Really?

It was a single sign-on system to Google properties, tied to a social networking thing. accounts.google.com came not far after plus.google.com.

Google wanted to avoid becoming MySpace and wanted to mimic Facebook, and miscalculated slightly.

Personally, I really like being able to sign in once to Google properties. I like that YouTube comments now have real names on them. It makes them much less toxic.

How is it that Google+ shut down youtube channels? Changing the display name is all I've seen it do.

clsec6• 12 years ago

I jumped on board early when I received an invite. I despised FB and was looking for for something that might actually resemble the tribe.net model of freedom and anonymity.

Unfortunately, I was told that I had to use my real name and signed up accordingly.

Everything was going along fine for about the first 9 months until I got into a small flame war with a woman in Canada about Scientologists (I used to work for some). That turned out to be the end of G+ for me.

It seems that the woman reported me for using a pseudonym, which to me and a few of my friends I obviously wasn't. I was livid! I immediately protested loud and clear in my timeline. One of my "hooped" IRL friends works at Yahoo! and told me that he had good connections at Google and could probably fix it for me. And that if he couldn't do that that he could at least vouch for me.

As he was trying to work his magic the pressure from Google was getting stronger. I had a big notice across my profile telling me that if I didn't provide legal proof of who I was that my account would be suspended in a week. I received the same threats in my gmail. So I started trying to work with them on this matter only to find that I was dealing with bots. I was beyond frustrated!

A few days later my friend came back to me and told me that there didn't seem to be much that he could do. I sure as hell didn't want to send them my my ID or birth certificate! So I caved in, scanned a court document with my full name on it and a judge's signature, and gmail'd it it.

I should mention that by this point Google had decided to lock my profile and place a huge notice across it demanding documents.

It took almost a full 2 weeks for them to get back to me and say that my document was legit. Well, duh!!

With my new found "legal" status I continued to use G+ for about another year or so. But as time marched on I became more and more disillusioned with Google and their products and interacted less and less with G+.

Then June 5th 2013 happened and I was introduced to the world of Edward Snowden. I immediately went and deleted everything from my profile and timeline (no small chore!). I then put a notice on my "about" page stating that due to privacy issues with Google and the NSA that this account is no longer active.

I now only use my gmail account, have been a happy DDG and IXquick user since before this all went down, and haven't been back to G+ since.

ikusalic• 12 years ago

"Only" gmail? But isn't email the most important part of your online life? I moved away completely from Google. Fastmail.fm instead of gmail was one of my first moves. And I never looked back...

clsec6• 12 years ago

See my reply to pron, but yes. Everyone, and all business, that I want to know me are in my contacts on another service. I also use Thunderbird, and PGP when possible, with my gmail account so at least I don't see any advertising.

oneweekwonder2• 12 years ago

For interested sake what do you think Google and the NSA would have been able to get out of G+, that they can not get out of email?

I understand you deleting the data does not remove it from Google but only publicly, but I just wonder.

clsec6• 12 years ago

In email I generally don't share all my beliefs and opinions whereas with G+ I did.

pron4• 12 years ago

I can understand not wanting the NSA to snoop your correspondence. I can't understand letting Google do that for years, analyze it, profile you and sell that information to just about anyone, but then thinking that the NSA is the final straw.

clsec6• 12 years ago

Fair point, I agree. My gmail addy is used as a back-up account. I use it for sign-ups, minor business, and as a spam trap.

tabio4• 12 years ago

Because "Google employees might find out that pron interested in computers and dogs" is less sensitive than "someone might send pron to a Saudi Arabian prison to be tortured because pron talks to someone with the same last name as a suspected revolutionary"

acjohnson552• 12 years ago

I think there is a big difference. As ubiquitous and powerful as Google is, the US government is vastly more powerful, and I think it's vastly more dangerous without accountability.

thefreeman• 12 years ago

I can't really understand the effort of deleting everything either. I highly doubt Google ever really deletes anything. Once you've sent it to their servers, the cat is out of the bag.

tomp• 12 years ago

Google can't put you to jail. NSA (and the government) can.

briandh5• 12 years ago

Among other differences, your relationship with Google is consensual, or at least largely so. The most extensive data collection Google does requires you to explicitly interact with its properties; tracking via ads and embeds often enables the sites you visit to sustain themselves, and, even if you want to quibble about how "consensual" that is, is trivially mitigated via free, brain-dead-simple browser extensions.

Put another way: you can enjoy the internet yet have little or no data go to Google. You cannot use the internet or the telephone in the US (and even, to an extent, in many foreign countries!) without data going to the NSA, with questionable benefit to you.

edit: typo

rlu• 12 years ago

Google really asks for proof of real name if a single person reports you? I would imagine it only happens if a "ton" of people report you.

RexRollman• 12 years ago

Google+ was the beginning of the end where using Google service was concerned for me. These days, I use Google only as a search engine and nothing more.

serf• 12 years ago

I think many of the policies that have been changed towards the usage of a real name are intrusive to privacy, but I have no pity on people who require privacy and lose it after willingly continuing to use a service that is known to conduct such practices.

tabio4• 12 years ago

That's a rather harsh way to limit your pity. I won't go so far as making the standard analogies of victim-blaming.

saraid2165• 12 years ago

So, what's your real name?

dm24• 12 years ago

I'd love to see Google+ turn into a LinkedIn and Facebook killer. I just have no use for Google+ at the moment. I don't really like the tiles display and would prefer a list.

The YouTube integration doesn't bother me at all because 1) I don't post YouTube comments, and 2) it's easy enough to just create a separate account for using with services that you don't want associated with your main Google account.

oneweekwonder2• 12 years ago

Do you have any details of the rewrite, what does it imply?

Backend, frontend, etc?

Even if you can just point me to the source it would be appreciated.

nobbyclark• 12 years ago

IMO the silently majority is tired of a panopticon of "look it me now" social services who's main use case is massaging users egos.

Google should start over, Android-first (instead of web -first) and make the phone Addressbook / Google Contacts the focal point for everything social. Look at WhatsApp - it does exactly this - your phone number is your ID and your contacts is your social graph; how you interact with them - who you call, message etc and when / where you do it - these are your circles

Meanwhile if you look at the direction Apple is going, eg new APIs for iCloud eg fingerprint authentication, new APIs for foto management / sharing etc etc. they look about ready to pounce on the whole of social...

dm24• 12 years ago

A large amount of employees have been moved from Google+ to Hangouts and Android.

I think Hangouts is going to be their new standard, unfortunately the transition will likely be fragmented because it's not forced in Android yet.

I've seen a very positive response to Google Hangouts, if they successfully (seamlessly) integrate it into Android then it could be a wildly successfully product. I'm not crazy about the name ("Connect" would be a good alternative IMO) and there should be some more calling/voicemail integration features.

vidarh9• 12 years ago

Google should start over, Android-first (instead of web -first) and make the phone Addressbook / Google Contacts the focal point for everything social. Look at WhatsApp - it does exactly this - your phone number is your ID and your contacts is your social graph; how you interact with them - who you call, message etc and when / where you do it - these are your circles

I find this fascinating, as unless I'm misunderstanding you, you're basically suggesting what G+ did to enrage users as described in the article, but seemingly worse:

Almost everyone have multiple "personalities". We don't share the same with our grandmother, our friends, our boss, our old class mates, random strangers and so on. This extends all the way to which names we use, how we dress in different situations, who we give our phone number to etc..

At first Google seemed to "get" this better than Facebook when they released G+. The moment Nymwars erupted it was clear they did not only not get this, but actively refused to learn.

For some this is not about hiding information. For some it is. For some it is a matter of actual survival - whether due to political involvement, or because of threats of revenge or abuse (think people avoiding abusing ex-partners etc.), or because of gender identity etc. (trans people have an incredible high suicide rate due in part to the reactions of wider society; on top of that there's actual violent reactions from people). Breaking compartmentalisation puts peoples lives at risk, not just cause embarrassing moments.

The first lesson one should learn in social, is that if you wish to create a social network that reflects how people interact, then people need to be able to full compartmentalise what different people see, down to and including your name and who else you are interacting with, and you need to make sure data are not easily leaking between those compartments and that needs to be holy.

In that respect, even having a single, unified addressbook / contacts list demonstrates that they don't understand (or has purposefully decided not to care about) real social networks (as opposed to the "panopticon" service you decry): It cuts as deep as not revealing all the information on all devices at all times - devices can be shared, or lent out, or someone might just glance at one at the wrong moment. It increases the risk of breaking compartmentalisation accidentally unless users are very tech savvy: Suddenly your device beeps, drawing attention to its screen, just as it displays a message the person sitting next to the device should not have seen.

If you're lucky / extremely conventional / boring, you laugh it off. If you're unlucky, it can cost you your job, your relationships, contact with your family, or your life.

Social networks is not just some fluffy web-app thing - it's the fabric of society, and they cut deep.

mcintyre1994• 12 years ago

I'd say iMessage over WhatsApp is the example of how to do it now. If Google copied iMessage feature-wise, syncing it between Chrome, Android and iOS, seamlessly integrating SMS and not, I think they'd have a winner.

WhatsApp is simpler but iMessage brings really useful features, and they strongly match Google's key competencies too.

Al-Khwarizmi• 12 years ago

WhatsApp is awful. Why should I need to give my phone number to anyone I want to chat with? There is people with whom I might want to have a text chat without letting them call me, and vice versa. And why, in 2014, should a social account be tied to a particular device? Why doesn't WhatsApp let me use my tablet or my PC to interact with my friends?

If WhatsApp is an example of something, it's that the network effect can make inferior technologies "stick" and dominate markets over much better competitors.

hellbreakslose• 12 years ago

Oh look its another goth chick blogging about Google and whats bad and whatever... Go back in your cave... noone told you to get involved with Google+ neither Google will go with you cause you based your life around Google+ ...

Why people nowadays take everything so granted... Guess what before 90 years people were going to the toilet...hmmm on their GARDENS!

compsci_mofo• 12 years ago

Google is interesting. Choc full of academically bright people, yet collectively dumb as fuck. Shame there is not a phd for common sense or being down to Earth.

tabio4• 12 years ago

Can you name one organization of 50,000 people that is collectively smart?

mnemonicsloth• 12 years ago

Large markets are very smart.

Smart is not necessarily nice. Without nice, incremental returns to smart may be negative. Furthermore, the terminal goal of a market is to give some group exactly what it wants. Such groups are often large, and their wants are defined by how their members act -- usually when others are not looking. A market does not care what anyone says they want.

It's a wonder the damn things aren't banned.

bowlofpetunias• 12 years ago

Google+ is just the most high profile symptom. The problem started when Google started using strategies against the fundamental nature of the internet.

We always assumed that Google was "good" because they understood and embraced the open and interconnected nature of the internet. They even stated so explicitly.

Google+, but also many other Google strategies follow the same pattern: trying to build walls instead of connecting, making things closed instead of more open.

galfarragem3• 12 years ago

To change status quo you need to provide enough value to motivate that change:

Google Search: Search experience was completely disrupted. Since that moment people could focus on what they needed (no disturbing ads) and be more efficient.

Gmail: Google innovated and simplified a lot email experience. You can easily measure the importance of Gmail to people by the importance of Gmail to the Google brand.

Chrome: As an early adopter, I could feel specially the speed difference. I always knew that would be a matter of time till Chrome control the market.

Google+: I never understood what value Google was adding to social networks. Facebook at the time didn't need to be disrupted also. After some time G+ went in the direction of Linkedin but couldn't add enough value to make people to change also. IMHO Google+ weakens Google brand. As simple as that. Should be closed? That is a good question.

vidarh9• 12 years ago

Facebook needed to be disrupted, but unfortunately the main way Facebook needed (and needs) to be disrupted is in compartmentalising sharing better, and while Circles accomplishes some of that, Googles real name policy pisses all over it.

galfarragem3• 12 years ago

As a user of Facebook and Linkedin I'm only moderately happy with the experience but I can't see myself changing soon. I would be happy to change to one social network that could "compartmentalize sharing better" (using your words) and be used for both social and work issues. If they could add some twitter functionality would be a plus. Is not efficient using different platforms all the time, would be easier to have one platform with different "modes".

There is plenty of space to disrupt the market but the status quo here is very strong. The problem is not if somebody changes or not, the problem is that everybody needs to change in mass or the network will be useless.

sumedh• 12 years ago

Add Google Buzz, Orkut, Google Wave, Google Talk, Hangouts.

Its like Google is trying everything and hoping something would stick.

galfarragem3• 12 years ago

You don't see Apple making that. They focus on few things and make them great.

saraid2165• 12 years ago

I never understood what value Google was adding to social networks.

For me, the value was "intelligent conversation". It basically replaced HN for me until they changed the UI to be photo-centric and carded.

Ironically, it was when I added an HN circle that my signal-to-noise ratio dropped.

Facebook at the time didn't need to be disrupted also.

Facebook has needed disruption since 2008.

facepalm• 12 years ago

To be fair the SMS+Hangouts integration seems to be what users want. Everybody and their dog is using Whatsapp by now, which is basically the same thing (I think - haven't used it).

spodek2• 12 years ago

A suggestion for Google to save itself regarding G+:

Donate some of its engineers' time to fix and revitalize Diaspora -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_%28social_network%29 -- or one of its peers or something along its original vision.

It could achieve its goal of disrupting Facebook, give users their privacy back, and by releasing the source code, could role back its role in maintaining the code or policing the community.

It could declare victory and move on, leaving its users more satisfied than they are now.

asdfologist3• 12 years ago

I agree that would be cool, but I don't think Diaspora offers anything compelling to the general public. What fraction of FB users actually care that much about privacy?

venomsnake• 12 years ago

By the amount of stuff I cannot see on a public profile pages lately and the amount of hidden friendslists - quite a lot in my somewhat diverse circle of friends.

pessimizer7• 12 years ago

In my experience, amongst non-technical people, around 95%. Amongst techies? A strong 20%.

drdaeman2• 12 years ago

Care? Most of them. Care enough to the extent they'd (figurally) vote with their wallets? Almost none.

unclebucknasty• 12 years ago

It could achieve its goal of disrupting Facebook

The Facebook (as a product) ship has sailed. Even Facebook knows this, which is why it's offering and paying billions to any products/services that can and/or have stolen its eyeballs.

Perhaps the worst mistake Google made in all of this was strategic: rather than trying to out-Facebook Facebook with a competing product (and nearly destroying their own ecosystem in the process), Google should have focused on using their considerable resources to snap up companies that were indirectly taking mindshare and audience from Facebook.

In so doing, they could have left Facebook's core product to Facebook and virtually surrounded it with other products/services for that inevitable time when people were ready for anything but Facebook.

In other words, they should have pre-empted Facebook's current strategy vs. it's prior one. As it is, Google is one step behind.

gone35• 12 years ago

Agree 100%.

If history is any guide, major players will end up doing precisely that, eventually: setting up an industry-backed open consortium promoting some kind of application-layer protocol/stack built around Diaspora or any its peers [1,2,3,4,5,6]. That plus another round of 2011-like Facebook fatigue could very well induce the required phase transition. Who knows though: perhaps newer, leaner companies like Dropbox or GitHub would be more likely to take the lead instead.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_software_and_prot...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tent_(protocol)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_Social_Networking_... (Defunct, apparently)

[3] http://www.gnu.org/software/social/ (!)

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSocial (This MySpace-era protocol is interesting because it was initially supported by Google)

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OStatus

fzltrp4• 12 years ago

I don't think that G+ was a mistake. The only real issue is the real name policy, though I fail to see how they'd be able to enforce it. People could create alternate email addresses with fake names (and some did), and use it when they want to participate social "i-events" without giving up their id. It's been like that before G+, and it would only take a small move from them to correct it. Of course, the downside of this is that they wouldn't be able to claim a number of real users. But could any social site?

Btw, am I the only one to find the article title offensive, and unworthy of a place like zdnet? I wasn't a regular reader of their columns, I don't think that will help.

Angostura• 12 years ago

The real issues were real names, the attempt to force use of a single identity across multiple Web properties and the difficulty of being able to work out what would be be visible to what people under what circumstances.

Which is really daft, considering that the whole 'Circles' thing was initially designed to do away with the 'different content for different audiences' issue originally.

ben0x5394• 12 years ago

The problem with "people could just create fake identities" is that they'd basically be permanently living with the fear of being caught by google and having their entire identity erased, and all the comments would just be "duh, what did they expect creating an alternate email address with a fake name?"

That a bad policy is inconsistently enforced doesn't really make it any less harmful. Selective enforcement is more evil if anything, imo.

Btw, am I the only one to find the article title offensive, and unworthy of a place like zdnet?

It's much less offensive than the G+ real name policy, so that's a weird focus. ;)

fzltrp4• 12 years ago

Well sure, as long as the real name policy is actively enforcable by G (which I doubt, but someone else apparently had to go through their enforcment practice), there's a risk. Then maybe it means that G isn't the right medium to express oneself anonymously and have an official virtual life. As I said, the only real problem is that policy.

It's much less offensive than the G+ real name policy, so that's a weird focus. ;)

I don't think we have the same definition of offensive (please correct me if my second language english is wrong). That policy was harmful, but I wouldn't qualify it as offensive. I think the article provides good examples where it was harmful.

That said, if you don't think it's inappropriate for someone to use anonymity (or is it her real name?) to insult someone else, you won't mind if I finish this comment by the same sentence? I won't, because I know that it's not necessary, and it would undermine the message I'm trying to convey, as it does in her case.

infinity• 12 years ago

So far it has always been a good policy for me to take these lines literally:

> Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information
> and make it universally accessible ...

http://www.google.com/about/company/

neurobro• 12 years ago

When someone now says doing something was a mistake, I sure hope the statement is in stark contrast with their sentiments at the time they were doing it. Otherwise, why do it?

hartator• 12 years ago

http://hartator.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/fire-vic-gundotra/

bane5• 12 years ago

Google+ embodied the Internet's cardinal sin: It broke everything it touched

I think this is the most important single line of the piece. G+ was pretty broken from the get go despite some promising ideas. But instead of focusing around what was working, Google simply amplified all the broken garbage -- then spread it around everywhere, making everything toxic, cancerous.

It's one of those many weird cases where you sit there, hands on your desk, mouth agape looking at some Google property that was fucked over by the G+ project and just ask yourself "doesn't anybody at Google use this garbage?". Because the issues are so immediate and so obvious, it's impossible that nobody raised some red flags.

Which leaves two possibilities:

- Google is composed of such inept socially awkward people that no red flags were raised and they all just proceeded on course doo dee doo doo dee (a scenario I find very hard to believe)

- Red flags were raised and simply brushed aside.

The first scenario is hard to believe because it presumes mass and gross incompetence on behalf of most of the employees at Google. But I know googlers, I've been interviews by Google, I've had various interactions with people from Google, and most of them just seem like normal folks from a variety of backgrounds.

As more and more leaks out it sounds like the second scenario is where it's at, and the question is why? Was it just some dumb headed attempt to extract any money possible for the major shareholders by turning the brand into garbage? Or was it just an honest attempt at unifying the properties, just managed at an absolutely amateurish level?

It's all so senseless and stupid and now everything is broken.

The sad thing is, this is something I see all the time, one hopelessly broken pet project is carried by the good idea fairy to some senior manager, and they being a cascade of failures across the rest of the company on something they probably have convinced themselves is just a big gamble with lots of upside. By the time the damage is done and widely recognized, the exec is out the door on their golden parachute leaving the remaining veterans to pick up the pieces and unfuck things. Except in this case, the ultimate party responsible holds half of the majority voting rights and continues to blissfully push socially inept product ideas. The only remediation is a long unfucking process and some possible minor impact on share price, meaning he can only buy 2 300' yachts instead of 2 350' yachts.

Silhouette2• 12 years ago

I think there was a more thought-provoking part than the "broke everything it touched" line:

Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt told National Public Radio digital editor Andy Carvin in 2011 that if people don't want to use their real names, then they shouldn't use Google+. He explained that Google should be considered "an identity service" with Google+ as the foundation across all its products.

Google, particularly its senior executives, have been utterly unrepentant as they've systematically trashed their once hallowed "do no evil" philosophy. The thing I find disappointing is that more people didn't take Schmidt's advice and stop using Google's services.

There are plenty of alternative search engines, e-mail services, video hosting sites, mobile operating systems and browsers. Outside these five, Google have relatively few big success stories anyway. Their track record in recent years has mostly been one failure after another, even sometimes damaging their established brands like YouTube and Google Maps.

And yet despite all the complaining, a lot of users seem to stick by them. I can understand that behaviour with Facebook (and Google+ itself) because of the inherent network effect, but the longevity of Google's brand loyalty is remarkable.

mikevm• 12 years ago

There are plenty of alternative search engines, e-mail services, video hosting sites, mobile operating systems and browsers.

Really? And who knows about all those alternatives?

I realized how big Google was when I was reading a book and the author said "Google <term>, ....", and it took me a second to parse that sentence. At first glance I thought he was saying something about Google corporation, but then I quickly realized he was telling to me look something up on the web. Google is synonymous with web search, and Gmail is probably synonymous with webmail.

bane5• 12 years ago

I think one thing that's now well appreciated is the network effects of the other bits of Google's product offering.

- Search - try searching for something on Bing with somebody else in the room and get the "why don't you just Google it?"

- Youtube, absolutely a strong network effect. I follow a bunch of retrogaming channels, and earlier this year Google's copyright monitoring processes and software lost its fool mind and drove a bunch of people (representing millions of views) off of the site because they had a half second clip of some background sound from a 30 year old video game in a video. After a while they all returned because they couldn't get traffic anywhere near the volume they were previously seeing.

- gmail - should be self explanatory

- maps - nothing else really is quite as good and definitely isn't as well integrated where you need it, your phone

mreiland2• 12 years ago

If I could find a good alternative to gmail, I'd take it in a second. Over the years, I've really started to dislike gmail, and most of google's services.

fanf2• 12 years ago

Google+ is the main reason I am very reluctant to get an Android phone.

tlogan2• 12 years ago

Red flags were raised and simply brushed aside.

People working at Google are smart (and majority that I know are smarter than me). Smart people are going to point that something is wrong. But they will not bitch too much because that will be "career-limiting move".

varelse• 12 years ago

Not true, I was at Google at the time and many of us complained mightily on our internal forums.

That said, there were a disturbing number of middle-level management types that would high five every move Google made, good or bad. And I think they turn into the echo chamber that gives idiocy like this its momentum.

adrianlmm• 12 years ago

Well, yes, people working at Google are smart but also very arrogant, I rarely see them listening to the users, you know, cause there is no way the "product" know better than them.

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

One of the things that struck me when I worked at Google was that its early rejection of anything that smelled of management or process directly led to the emergence of "Just get things done" sort of mantra, but the scale of early screw-ups limited the ability to get things done only to 'trusted' (generally low employee # folks with a track record) people. I managed to push a project through, in spite of the fact that I wasn't a low numbered employee, but it took 6x longer than it should have and required a crap ton more politicing than it would have if a different person had pushed it. (One person I knew there, given the combination of their history and reputation, could have probably gotten it done in 3 or 4 months)

What that does is greatly magnify the influence of a small number of people and completely nullify the influence of a large number of people. At the time I left, there was some institutional awareness of this issue (heaven knows I had shared it enough with the leadership) but the 'fix' (random injection of 'management' was itself not going well).

And all of that to say, that it takes both good people and good structure to make this happen. I realized I wasn't plugged into the organization at a place where I could make that level of change occur. So when I read the article I recognized a bit of self awareness in Sergi at his over sized influence in a negative way on the product, and a dysfunctional organization which could not guide, or if necessary prevent that influence.

The irony is that if Google was as well managed as a place like NetApp under Warmhoven or GE was under Welch, it would mega-corp scary. (Granted it still can be to an extent, but quite extremely so)

bane5• 12 years ago

And all of that to say, that it takes both good people and good structure to make this happen.

Yeah, and that's sort of the problem with absolute dictatorships in practice, even benevolent ones. Sometimes the dictator can get wrapped up in some "good idea" and they really need a diverse set of voices confirming or checking bad ideas at the door before, like in this case, a billion dollars or more of corporate value is flushed down the drain and huge swaths of users are alienated from the brand.

jseliger• 12 years ago

- Google is composed of such inept socially awkward people that no red flags were raised and they all just proceeded on course doo dee doo doo dee (a scenario I find very hard to believe)

The other possibility is that Facebook evolved from a relatively small idea to a very large one, attending to users along the way (Peter Thiel discusses this issue in one of his lectures; G+ launched as a huge product that had to succeed right away, based on what Google engineers thought users want and based on the need to be something Facebook isn't.

yuhong2• 12 years ago

Except in this case, the ultimate party responsible holds half of the majority voting rights and continues to blissfully push socially inept product ideas.

Not in the case. Vic Gundotra was responsible that did not hold majority voting rights, who managed to convince the Google founders that did have it.

bane5• 12 years ago

If I'm not mistaken, Vic Gundotra was never the CEO of Google. ergo, he never was ultimately responsible.

andyidsinga• 12 years ago

Google+ broke our trust

Google Reader did it for me. ..and did it for every product where I'm on paying $. I have hardly used google+ and I haven't missed a thing.

tlogan2• 12 years ago

What is the future of Google+? Is Google trying to pivot it into something different? Or Google+ will be just a platform (for login, profile info, etc).

chaser7016• 12 years ago

Google Buzz and now Google+.

Google stop trying to be Facebook! You need to change course and focus on the consumer(customer service) & their privacy.

Otherwise others will and are starting to eat your lunch!

saraid2165• 12 years ago

Good job. You are now merely 3 years behind everyone else on your commentary.

Your next quest is to formulate a complaint about Google Reader shutting down.

Pxtl3• 12 years ago

My problem with Google+ isn't the unification of Google's social platform. That makes absolute sense. The problem with Google+ is that it's way too opinionated.

It's a platform, not a product. A platform has to bend to the needs of its users, and those "users" aren't necessarily the people posting the comments - it's also the people hosting the comments on their YouTube pages and whatnot.

I appreciate wanting Plus to be backed by a "real" ID, but pseudonym support that fully anonymizes the user (and controls over whether pseudonymous users are allowed to post to your pages) should have been a day 1 feature, for example.

dang• 12 years ago

We changed the title from "Thanks for nothing, jerkface" to the first subtitle of the article, which (a) isn't linkbait and (b) is more or less what the article seems to be about.

_random_• 12 years ago

"Brin told ... that ... he was “kind of a weirdo” and "It was probably a mistake for me to be working on anything tangentially related to social to begin with." - I respect him more now. Being late to market was probably a bigger mistake though.

ulfw• 12 years ago

You respect him for noticing this only now?

muzz• 12 years ago

It sounds like Sergey is saying that his involvement in Google+ was a mistake, not that that the company going down that path was a mistake. I think the author is taking the word "mistake" out of context:

"It was probably a mistake for me to be working on anything tangentially related to social to begin with."

cromwellian3• 12 years ago

I think it is pretty refreshing for an executive to be self critical and admit big mistakes. Sergey sounded authentic in that interview.

Scott Forestall was axed for Apple Maps, but seriously, you rewrite a Maps service from the ground up from scratch and race to release it in iOS6, of course it's going to be beta quality for a long time, since these things take time to mature. I highly doubt the decision to include it in that state was solely Scotts.

I like to see companies admit major strategic mistakes as opposed to pretending everything is awesome for all time. (and no, Tim Cook's letter was a kind of non-apology, only a single sentence really admitted any mistake 'We fell short of our commitment')

nacs2• 12 years ago

Agreed on the admitting mistakes part but mentioning Scott Forstall as an example doesn't follow.

From what I've read, Scott Forestall was fired less for the issues in the Maps application and more for his refusal to sign any sort of apology afterwards for its shortcomings. I'm sure there were other internal factors for his firing but his refusal to publicly admit a mistake was a significant part.

cromwellian3• 12 years ago

Maybe he felt he didn't need to apologize because he was forced to rush and release in iOS6?

What if the following conversation happened internally:

Scott: "Maps is not ready" Cook: "Maps must ship as part of iOS6, it's the headline feature. We are committed to this time table." Scott: "But there are lots of issues, lots of bugs." Cook: "Fix as many as possible before release, but we are shipping."

Then, after the fiasco, he is asked to apologize, wouldn't you feel that the people who didn't take your advice should be the ones to apologize?

yuhong2• 12 years ago

I like to submit things like this to HN for a reason: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3106555&cid=41288357

And BTW I am thinking that the EU privacy policy fiasco is probably related. And to think that the EU courts recently ruled that current data protection laws requires that search engines must remove results on request.

pasbesoin• 12 years ago

"Opt in".

If you like e.g. "single sign-on", it should be your choice to set it up and participate. Not coercion. Not coercion holding your existing investment in various products (of which Google was and is acquiring ever more) hostage.

If what you are offering is of benefit to your users (should I use the word "customers"? -- a whole other discussion), you should be able to sell it to them -- on an "opt-in", "I'd like to use this feature" basis.

As Google+ rolled out, it became evident that it was anything but this.

True names. Then the stories -- accurate or not -- of account deletions.

I was damned if I was going to risk my longstanding Gmail account for the sake of trying out Plus. Fortunately, the integration was not so quick and thorough that I was at that time compelled to participate in Plus in order to keep that account. (Sign up for Gmail now, and you get a Plus profile, like it or not.)

Plus has some nice technical features, and some of the conversation I intersect (under a separate Google identity that I can afford to lose) during my limited interaction with it, consist of more thoughtful and interesting content.

But I'll never trust it -- Plus, that is.

Google showed us all, with Plus, the limits of their advocacy for us, the users.

model-m• 12 years ago

Google+ made it just a little too clear that Google is in the business of remembering everything about those who interact with it.

The attitude of "Google knows best what's good for you, and doesn't have to justify itself or even acknowledge your objections" also doesn't mesh with what a social network should be, in the minds of many.

vpeters25• 12 years ago

I think G+ could've owned the "social internet" without the "real id" rule.

They had the chance to drive facebook and twitter out of business... they blew it.

brownbat2• 12 years ago

Using and loving G+ and Hangouts to this day. I like how easy it is to get a group chat or a video chat going in the browser, and I like the increased control over sharing I have, especially relative to FB. (I can even share with people who don't want to log in because they hate the service. My FB friends cannot.)

I'm trying to sift through the complaints to see if they're relevant to me, but haven't had much luck so far.

1. Everything

Complaints on the order of "it broke everything" just seem hyperbolic and silly.

2. Nymwars

I think they should allow pseudonyms, but I don't blame the company for trying build something tied a little tighter to real world identities after fighting a decade long war against fraud and spam behind the scenes. I feel like it's within their prerogative to say they're building an identity service, because pseudonym based logins are already widely available. Faulting them for that choice is a bit like saying you don't like Gmail because you think email is stupid.

3. YouTube

Among the other major complaints is that they broke YouTube comments, ie, the worst den of inane and offensive comments on the internet since 4chan. Good for them, the team deserves a medal.

Someone made a mashup just to illustrate the depravity of comments on the video site a few years ago: http://comments.thatsaspicymeatball.com/

4. Popularity

Probably the other tacit criticism is that Google launched a service that didn't immediately trounce all other social media sites, delivering everything for everyone. It's used by a mere 350 million people. It's been criticized for that number being only a third of its registered base, but that seems perfectly on track or better than estimates for other social media sites. Twitter's active userbase is probably roughly 20%, for example:

http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-total-registered-user...

It's weird that a site with 350 million active monthly users is considered an embarrassing failure. I'm sure lots of services would be happy to trade userbases with G+.

It had a few cool features. It wasn't world changing. I feel like it hit some of the Segwey effect, a victim of its hype more than of its failings.

5. Aesthetics.

I feel this is the most inarguable complaint. Some people don't like the style of G+, don't like its approach to usability, or find its sharing system needlessly complex or confusing. By all means, these individuals should not use the service. I don't like the look and feel of Pinterest. I shouldn't use Pinterest. To each her own. I worry some authors subtly shift this argument from "I don't like the feel of it," or even, "My friends don't like it," to "It is a failure of design that no one should use." Seems a bit unfair.

I believe there are good usability guidelines, but I don't subscribe to the belief that there is a perfect one size fits all, that all implementations of any service will eventually converge to one platonic form. Competition is good because we all like different things, each find different styles more intuitive.

I'd be happy to consider other arguments, but so far allegations of the service's abject horribleness seem somewhat exaggerated.

brownbat2• 12 years ago

I suspected there weren't very many legitimate criticisms, that this was mostly emotional iconoclasm.

Silent downvotes are a sort of confirming evidence.

joeevans10004• 12 years ago

We are google's product. We are bundled and cleaned and sold to advertisers. The google+ process was just a plan to tell their customers that they had a nice, leaner, more refined product. Previously, their customers were complaining that the product wasn't as verifiable. This is a bit like the organic food certification process.

Google+ broke our trust

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