Google+: One too many eggs in the Google basket | Hacker News Reader

Google+: One too many eggs in the Google basket

extremetech.com

45 pointsprimatage32 comments

This is of course not limited to Google. Consider the case of someone who returned a television on the recommendation of the Amazon help desk, but that triggered their customer-has-returned-too-many-items --- which then disabled his access to his ebooks purchased through Amazon books.[1] And if that person was an entrepreneur using S3/EC2 for his idea for a new company, he could lose access to his Amazon virtual machines, too.

[1] http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=44350

Did that ever get resolved? That's pretty scary, makes me want to not use amazon anymore for ebooks and to get something other than a kindle for my next e-reader.

Last I checked it is possible to remove all the DRM from the Kindle e-books you buy and back them up in a portable format. It takes quite a few steps (utilizing a PID generator and MobiDeDRM), but I am sure you can automate the process.

I find it interesting that the article begins by talking about how great it is that Google+ puts pressure on facebook and then immediately tries to paint the service as a bad thing. Intrinsic to the claim that G+ is a long-awaited challenge to the "monopolistic" facebook is the obvious fact that Google is one of the few entities with the power to challenge the facebook behemoth. So why then does the author then complain that Google is too big?

>So why then does the author then complain that Google is too big?

Because gray areas and mixed bags can exist. g+ doesn't have to be perfect to do things right, and doing some things right doesn't fix other problem areas. There can simultaneously be upsides and downsides of the same thing.

The transition is made in the first sentence of the third paragraph: "The problem with this rationale, however rosy it may seem, is that you’re simply moving from one internet juggernaut to another." He first explained the pros of Google+ and then moved onto the cons.

There are a lot of 'anti' Google+ articles coming out at the moment. Google+ is a trending topic, positive Google+ coverage is common, so negative Google+ coverage stands out.

Now as to whether or not the author of the cited article makes their case or not, I'm with other folks who agree that if you're using gmail/docs/picassa/talk then you're probably already have this risk and Google+ neither adds or decreases that risk.

What it does point out, and the author doesn't explore, is that the Google+ infrastructure, binding these Google properties together, is what makes Google+ interesting. And it might be even more interesting if there was some sort of meta social operating system thing which would let you plug in the components you wanted (your email provider, your chat provider, etc).

I expect that if someone could pull that off they would get even more attention.

And it's not just the web properties. Google has a functional business ecosystem addressing not only desktop and mobile software platforms, but also the hardware partners to extend it worldwide. For better or for worse, Google has positioned itself as the current internet software infrastructure provider. Nobody else, neither Apple nor Microsoft is in a position to compete with them with such an extensive offering and grab as large as a market share.

Facebook has a website with a serious credibility problem among mature users and growing fatigue amongst their core user base. A year from now you will not be taken seriously if you champion Facebook over Google+. And I say that as someone who has consistently derided their social offerings, although I will admit that Orkut was good for awhile.

FUD at its best. Not only is the Facebook TOS just as convoluted and subject to arbitrary BS as Google's but for every story about some user having his crap deleted on a Google property, there's 10 people complaining that Facebook did the same to them.

Things regarding nudity, etc. -- does he not realize Facebook has the same rules? You can't post a profile pic of your buttocks on Facebook. Dirty content or under-age user gets profile deleted, news at 11. At least I can "sign out" of Facebook, ha ha, didn't you start off the article bawwwwing over how prevalent Facebook Connect is?

Anybody that uses Facebook or Google+ has already deemed the above risks as acceptable, so none of this is really an issue for them. The benefit we all get out of two major social network players is that there's at least a chance that they will try to play nicer with their users out of fear that the competition will start to pull ahead if they don't.

The real endgame that I'm hoping for is that Google promotes some majorly open APIs for integration between social networks, kind of like Diaspora was except now done right and with major backing, and then social networking becomes a decentralized and commoditized service the way blogging is now. (Then Google wins, because their search engine is the center of the universe again, and the social web is just a commoditized paper canvas with their ads all over it.)

I agree with most of your points - However, I think the author's main complaint was that if you do anything somehow objectionable on any Google service, then all of them get blocked. I don't see why that's the case, but as long as it continues, his point is valid - Facebook won't also ban your email for posting nudity. They can only smash one egg, not your entire internet basket.

Unless you do most of your communicating with family through Facebook, or use Facebook Connect to authenticate with external sites; then you're just as screwed if they ban you.

The thing I notice about Google+ is that the only thing people use it for is talking about Google+.

This strikes me as a bad thing. Didn't Orkut and Wave and other 'failed' similar services from other companies have the same problem? Limited appeal? Too recursively tied up in their own cleverness?

The thing people hate about Facebook is the trivial uses the muggles put it to. But there are not 500 million techos in the world.

Unless and until people start talking about mundane non-techo stuff, I won't consider Google+ to have succeeded.

I already use it for sharing pictures with my friends and more or less as a replacement for Twitter. Of course, I'm not a very typical example, since my Twitter is mostly tech news links anyway.

That may say more about your online friends than it says about Google+. I have friends on Facebook talking about Google+, and occasionally see a mention of it on Twitter, but everyone in my G+ "Friends" circle are using it as they had been using Facebook. At least two have closed down their Facebook account and migrated completely, and while they're more techie than Joe-YouTube-Commenter, one works at a bank and the other in carving granite, so, not -that- kind of techie.

This article has several scary insights. When Google has too many eggs, they start to work against each other for the user. And talking about monopolies: "If you think that Facebook has a monopoly in the social scene, just imagine for a second what your life on the web would be like if you switched to Google+" Sebastian didn't even mention Google Fiber! Eventually, Google might even be your internet service provider!!! WOW. It is interesting how this article starts out leaving you to believe that Google+ is beneficial to the social network industry, but then gives reason after reason why we live in a scary world that collects and sells your information.

I also think the vagueness about how Google defines "illegal" is ridiculous! Why don't they just make Google+ a self-policed community? This solves all sorts of issues.

I can't speak for the rest, but "Why don't they just make Google+ a self-policed community?" is because companies operate, and users live, in sovereign nations and are subject to the laws of those nations. Setting up a parallel legal framework is a non-starter.

I'm blushing :)

Yes, I actually got to the last paragraph and realized that I could then dive into Google Fiber and Chrome OS... but I had to wrap it up!

There's definitely more to say about Google and/or Facebook taking of the web, though, that's for sure.

Self-policing on the internet by and large rarely works out well. Before long, most of the interesting people are driven out by the assholes, and the only other people left hanging around the assholes are the morons and bottom-of-the-barrel trolls.

FTA: You’re taking your chips from Facebook and investing them in Google+. This might be a satisfactory solution in the short term, but do you have any rational reason to believe that it’s better in the long term?

The author seems to be under the mistaken impression that people are moving to G+ because they trust Google more than Facebook. I can't speak for everyone, but the primary reason I'm switching is that Facebook is poorly thought out and lacks any real tools for managing my social network. It's just a big multi-threaded comment system with photo- and video-sharing thrown in. Circles is such an obvious improvement that it boggles my mind that Facebook hasn't managed to deploy something like it. Too busy watching movies about themselves, I guess.

"Circles is such an obvious improvement that it boggles my mind that Facebook hasn't managed to deploy something like it."

They have. All of the same functionality exists within "lists" and "groups". The only difference is that Facebook hasn't wrapped those features into a unified UI. If circles catches on, I expect Facebook to copy it in about half a heartbeat.

Groups are a different feature entirely. And I don't see an option to limit my posts to a list, which is the chief benefit of creating a circle. Presumably Facebook could implement this functionality, but they have not. Which is my point.

In Facebook, to limit a post to a list, near the new post field you click the lock and downward arrow icon which displays a drop-down of choices such as "Everyone", "Friends", or "Custom". Click "Edit" next to "Custom". This brings up a modal box. In the "Make this Visible to" section, under "These People:", from the dropdown select "Specific People...". This makes a textfield appear. Type the name of the friend list (hopefully you have the names of all of your lists committed to memory, or at least the letter they start with) and a typeahead will display suggestions. From the typeahead suggestions, choose a list by clicking it. Click "Save Setting" to exit the modal box and return to the post editor. Hover over the lock and downward arrow icon again to display a tooltip of what lists the pending post will be shared with to confirm you have done everything correctly. Create the post and click "Share".

So Facebook does have the option but it is hidden away below 'mystery meat navigation' [1] and is generally not at all intuitive for the average user. Google+ is receiving (deserving) credit for the concept because the implementation is present and forward in the UI.

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

So it sounds like FB can ramp up to this pretty quickly; they just need to ditch their post-centric UI for a friends-centric UI. Or at least make a friends-centric UI easily available.

Yes, exactly. As I said, between "lists" and "groups", they have all of the same functionality. They just need to improve the UI.

(The parent post also missed that you can pre-create friend lists, and restrict posts based on those lists. So it isn't as bad as it sounds -- but it isn't easy, either.)

I feel like the author already knows the answer to this problem: "you either keep your content clean, or host [it] elsewhere." I agree there could be border-line issues with the legal system, but that mostly is about Google not getting sued, and having to comply with the law they operate in. (Still, Google should have a hotline.)

The author listed almost every complaint people have against Google since its founding, but the main point remains this: Google is an extremely successful company, and if you choose to use the best products, those are often owned by Google (Chrome, Google Search, Gmail etc.). However, you don't have to. If you don't like what Google does, there's always an alternative you can easily switch to - and that, imho, is the big distinction between Google and a monopoly.

(I might have to add that I see a lot of the author's sentiments being pretty wide-spread, at least here in Europe Google is considered a pretty evil, privacy-invading company they don't want to give any more personal information.)

This is like saying you should be a citizen of more than one country, so in case you do something illegal in one, you can always flee to another.

Why don't you just not break the ToS?

Because the ToS are infantilizing, designed to water-down human interactions for maximum advertiser-friendliness?

How are they infantilizing? I've never had a problem with anyone's ToS. They don't allow nudity, don't post nudity. It's really not that hard not to break them unless they have arbitrary bullshit rules like "YOU CAN'T SAY APPLE ON WEDNESDAY" or if, like Facebook, all your data is their property.

Does the ToS let me communicate as if I were in a room full of adults and friends? Or does it require me to behave like I was visiting a grade-school classroom?

You're comparing becoming a citizen in a foreign country to signing up with a social network? There are a hell of a lot more barriers to becoming a foreign citizen, such as physical location, than signing up for a social network and giving it all your personal data.

Google is a much bigger data-collecting, privacy-breaching behemoth than Facebook, so signing up with them should be an action that warrants thought.

It was a metaphor. I wasn't exactly saying that it was exactly the same. And yeah, it does warrant thought, but the whole point of this article is that when one site owns all your web apps, if you piss them off, you lose access to all of those at once. I'm wondering why people don't just not dick around. I've never gotten kicked/banned from anything by accident. Just don't post a picture of your ass on G+ and your docs will be fine.

Maybe this is true for US cit's. But if you think a bit more out of the box than just "States", the author has quite a point. Just look at what some gov'ts in less well of countries with regard to FoS now are doing in terms of monitoring People by "spying on" social networks. I think if you take the WWW (where world != only US), the issues the author raises do matter, and quite a lot. It might be much easier to reach a "state" where you get locked out of all your "eggs".

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