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Comment by Causality1 | Hacker News Reader

>Project Hancock was the internal code name of the project designed to do this. It was going to set up a Google Plus account for every Google user. This is actually much more complicated than it sounds; it took a team of engineers somewhere around three months to accomplish it.

What this bit glosses over is the PR disaster that was Google forcing Google+ down the throats of its unwilling users. For example, for years they required Youtube users to consent to the creation of a Google+ profile in order to comment or message other users. I took that as a personal affront and not only refused to consent but installed an extension written specifically to block Google's constant, full-screen begging that blocked even passive Youtube usage.

When I pulled all my Google data with their personal download tool a few months ago, there was no section for Google+. I consider that a hard-won badge of honor.

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>It was going to set up a Google Plus account for every Google user.

Oh god. Thanks to this dreadful decision I went from not giving a crap about G+ to actually despising it and wanting it to fail miserably.

I had a youtube account long before Google took over and now all my activity was being posted on my G+ account feed or something. Now I had to turn that off.

Thanks for letting everybody know that I liked some videos Barney the Dinosaur because I let my sister use my PC, Google.

> I took that as a personal affront

You're not the only one, and I wonder how much that feeling contributed to the failure of Google+. Because the harder Google tried to shove it down my throat, the more I resented it and swore to myself that I wouldn't touch it.

Yep. It also happened around the same time when they ditched Reader. I never used Reader and don't care too much personally, but it seems they angered a small but vocal community that felt they were sacrificed for Google+.

This along with the forced YouTube integration were particularly egregious. Then there was the bit where they started forcing people to use real names. Overall they showed zero respect for their users and people deserted them accordingly.

I probably would have been interested at some point had I started using it by my own initiative, but I got forced into Google+ by this project.

I didn't understand what it was (a bare bones Facebook clone? ), didn't have friends who used it and I can't remember if I saw no content or just only irrelevant content. I gave it maybe 15 minutes and never came back.

And I actually considered myself an interested user, at the time I used Facebook but hated it and still saw Google as a force for good.

This, Google was shoving the Hancock down to every Google user.

It didn't just die by itself. Google Talk was killed with Google+ too. It was a functional, no-nonsense IM that just worked and worked everywhere. After they engulfed this into Google+, it just became a bloated monstrosity that no one could understand. Remember when it suggested you every Google+ user when you tried to type a friend's name in Hangouts? Yeah... that was pretty fucked up.

I am just amazed that Youtube didn't die with it after it was used as a gateway to Google+.

> This, Google was shoving the Hancock down to every Google user.

My brain read that as "down every Google user's throat", and I got an idea why they decided to name it that.

Google Talk was fantastic. The desktop experience was great, and the mobile apps were flawless, even on Nokia Symbian and Blackberry 6 OS.

It's the only Google product that felt fun to use. I haven't bothered with Hangouts, Allo, Duo or any of the stuff that followed it.

That's what you get when some team's bonus depends on conversion rate.

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