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Comment by f055 | Hacker News Reader

Turns out "engineered social interactions" is indeed an oxymoron. Also, Google's work structure where most product leads don't have dedicated tech teams but instead have to win over tech groups to work on their projects result in too much technocracy and too little empathy in projects like this. Can't say I feels sorry for them though. Google masqueraded itself as an idealistic company and a champion of the internet but consistently kept undermining the free web in pursuit of money. It's a great business model and they made a huge commercial success. But the "do no evil" bullshit and the cult-like attitude of googlers is just pathetic.

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Google is 'famously bottom up' as you mention. Problem I see here is that they tried to combine bottom-up, with the top-down edict of "We want to kill Facebook"

From Google Search onwards, I find/try the product, I like it, it evolves and improves (I presume after some A/B testing somewhere). e.g. gMail is 'web based email client', but was first I know of to let you tag, import from other accounts - and now has the tabs, unsubscribe buttons etc. When some changes (such as the tabs) first arrive, I feel a bit uncomfortable, but you get used to them.. then appreciate them.. and I build up a buffer of trust for the next change that might come.

G+ didn't spring into existence because of customer demand. It appeared because google decided google needed it. We didn't create accounts because they looked useful, they were created to try to get google's network running quickly. We had features pulled on other google products, to push us towards using the damn thing. e.g. I suspect removing latitude from maps wasn't a decision from the maps team to improve their product.

It’s “don’t be evil”, not “do no evil”. There’s a subtle but important difference.

Really? How does one distinguish being from doing in that sense? Scoring actions on an evilness scale and taking an average?

Do as much evil as you want, just remember to rationalize it somehow!

Not being evil is achievable; most people achieve it. Doing no evil is impossible, even if you tie bells to your pants to avoid accidentally stepping on bugs.

> It’s “don’t be evil”, not “do no evil”. There’s a subtle but important difference.

So, too, the difference between "don't be evil" and "be good."

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