There's no avoiding Google+
online.wsj.com
online.wsj.com
"The issue central to the case was whether Microsoft was allowed to bundle its flagship Internet Explorer (IE) web browser software with its Microsoft Windows operating system . . . Underlying these disputes were questions over whether Microsoft altered or manipulated its application programming interfaces (APIs) to favor Internet Explorer over third party web browsers." (1)
When does leveraging a platform flip from good business to unfair competition?
The moment you gain monopoly status in one market and attempt to leverage that status in another. Until then, happy bundling! Read the Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law docs from that case. They make it pretty clear.
From Wikipedia: "...the appeals court did not overturn the findings of fact. The D.C. Circuit remanded the case for consideration of a proper remedy under a more limited scope of liability."
...and then Bush replaced Clinton in the White House, after which the DoJ dropped the case.
So I think I still have a good answer for aresant's question.
I think they did. I'll give you a quote from the actual appellate opinion: "To establish a dangerous probability of success, plaintiffs must as a threshold matter show that the browser market can be monopolized, i.e., that a hypothetical monopolist in that market could enjoy market power. This, in turn, requires plaintiffs (1) to define the relevant market and (2) to demonstrate that substantial barriers to entry protect that market. Because plaintiffs have not carried their burden on either prong, we reverse without remand."
Naturally there is a context to that (and they didn't reverse everything the district court did, but some things) and you're invited to read the entire opinion if you're interested.[1] Incidentally, if there is one thing I've found Wikipedia to be regularly wrong or incomplete about, it's the content of court opinions.
Moreover, findings of fact are a distinct thing from conclusions of law. "Findings of fact" are usually decided by juries, but sometimes by trial judges when there is no jury, and it means deciding what actually happened, not deciding what the law is. For example, a finding of fact might be whether Microsoft did actually pressure OEMs not to bundle Netscape, but not whether or not having done that would be a violation of the antitrust laws, which would be a conclusion of law rather than a finding of fact.
(I should point out that we're having a nice theoretical discussion here and that this is not legal advice, and if you need legal advice you should consult an attorney.)
[1] Here is one freely available copy of the appellate opinion I found through Google: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/msdoj/msft_ruling.html
While I am not a lawyer either, my reading is that you have quoted from a section of the document pertaining to a claimed violation (in the Conclusions of Law) that are with regard to § 2 of the Sherman act (monopoly maintenace), whereas aresant's question is with respect to product tying, which is a § 1 violation, which was merely remanded – and, eventually, dropped.
OK sure. And "remand" means the trial judge made mistakes and has to try again, not that they did everything right. When they do substantially everything right it will say "affirmed" and then that part of the case is over (or gets appealed to a higher court instead of going back down). And as you already pointed out, the case being settled/dropped probably had a lot more to do with politics and the incoming Bush administration than anything to do with the court system or the law or whether the original district judge was right or wrong.
The point is, you have to get a monopoly first. Google doesn't have one.
Also it looks like in EU it is officially a monopoly and in Brazil it isn't.
Also I owe @aresant an apology for rejecting his idea outright. It looked so obvious to me with bing owning about 30% of search market share!
There is also the small matter of Google being free, and the lack of any meaningful lock-ins (this being the web and all) and the matter of Facebook being the leading social network, and other such subtleties that make these cases very dissimilar.
There is also the discussion of whether or not the DOJ was wise in pursuing that case which they subsequently lost, seeing as last I checked IE still ships with Windows.
Netscape was the leading browser when IE started being bundled. I don't disagree with you, but I don't think that argument makes a lot of sense.
Here Google is just a website on the internet, granted it's a significant website but so is Facebook, and you don't have to go through Google to reach Facebook. My point is that Facebook is a large entity that exists alongside Google, and so does Twitter and many others so it's not a one vendor market.
The question that I ask myself every time I get redirected to a G+ sign-up page is What's in it for me? My friends don't use it it and I have no interest in using it as a glorified RSS/Twitter.
This is absolute bullshit.
As I've mentioned before, I quit about 1.5 years ago, around the time the G+ fiasco was starting (and partially for that reason.) I also know, directly or indirectly, dozens of people who still work there. I can tell you that, if the internal complaints have died down, it's only because of the pervasive feeling of futility about it within the company. The engineers are most probably still not happy about the creeping Social-ificiation of everything, and they're not going to be happy, but they're also well aware that the company does not give two shits about their feelings on the subject.
That being said, I'm really frustrated with Google and other Social Media companies for this aggressive behavior.
There are hardly any laws in place protecting consumer information or regulating the troves of information being collected through social media. I imagine Facebook and Google at this point must have more extensive "dossiers" on more people than spy agencies.
It makes me a little uncomfortable, I don't fully understand why. Nor can I grasp what the implications of all this data collection/mining are yet. But here we are going full speed ahead.
Also I think this mindset officially makes me an old fart.
No offense, but if you were really an old fart you would be accepting some personal responsibility for your role in this transaction.
"You'll go to search for a camp stove on Google,
and you'll find that your friend just bought one, and
you'll be able to ask him about it," says Dylan Casey,
a former Google+ product manager who now works at Path
Inc., a smartphone-based social network.
IMHO, what's more likely to happen is: You search for a camp stove, and your G+ friend has written a _public_ review of one, and your personalized search results show your friend's review as well. Personally, I would find that quite helpful since I can now contact my friend directly about this, but even if you don't, why not disable personalized results for yourself?
(To your prediction of how this feature might play out in reality I would say that you are probably right, but also that I don't give two shits about what my friends buy OR about what they publicly review.)
What we know for certain is that Google is aggressively pushing its users onto G+ and that is the real heart of the problem. It's a bait-and-switch. I have no intention of using Google as a social network and I have no guarantees that I will be able to opt out of current or future features. The writing is on the wall -- Google will be social. That upsets some people.
Anyway. Yes. Personal responsibility... for not being cynical enough to realize that you never should have trusted the nefarious fiends like Google to begin with when you started using their services.
No, really though: when someone like Google lulls a bunch of people into thinking that they'll be doing one thing, and then do another, that's what the layman calls "bait and switch". (Go ahead, blame the victims.)
The economist would examine the system, question whether there was any tendency toward a natural monopoly because of network effects (possible but not certain), and point out that because there are high switching costs that the market for social media and like services doesn't really meet the prerequisites for being an efficient one (low transaction costs). The result is an inefficient market causing a deadweight loss to society, at least in the short to intermediate run... still nothing to celebrate in any event.
Maybe I'm just paranoid but it smells like a targeted campaign :P
Free service, you get what you pay for, etc., but this odd cascading change is the kind of thing that drives my (70+) parents crazy, and they take note of the fact that it was Google that broke the thing they were comfortable using.
Picasaweb and Google+ use the same back-end. The back-end makes no distinction between albums created in Picasaweb and albums created in G+. Having an option in Picasa desktop client to control whether an album is created in Picasaweb or Google+ would be nonsensical.
I just tried creating an album in Picasa desktop client. I clicked on "Sync to web" and the album was uploaded and was available from both Picasaweb and in G+ Photos with identical functionality.
I tried creating a second album, but instead of turning on "sync to web" I clicked on the "Share your album on G+" button. I 'shared' the album with myself. The resulting album is available in either Picasaweb or G+.
1) Any upgrades the Picasa Web interface planned? 2) Why when I search for tags it shows everyone's photos by default? 3) Why do tag searches not return all photos that are tagged with the term?
Thanks.
The scary part was knowing the security settings. By default the album is set to "Only You", but you can change it "Limited, anyone with link" or "Public."
If you go into Google + it'll show you all your albums through that interface with the same security enabled.
The impetus for such integration comes from the top: Google Chief Executive Larry Page has sought more aggressive measures to get people to use Google+, two people familiar with the matter say.
That is extremely telling about Google. Taken positively, it means the founder has bet the company on social. Taken negatively, it means google's biggest bet is so far a spammy and largely disliked product.
Is it really that bad?
Google is a free service that we reap a lot of benefits from. We have a lot of software engineers here. Google is indispensable followed by Stack Overflow. I highly doubt we'd be able to finish an app if Google goes down.
What's a couple of minutes to set up one?
We know that Google+ is also a way for Google to more accurately target ads. Advertising is the main source of revenue. If Google can't make enough money off advertising, it would have to shut some services down.
This is why I don't use AdBlock. If a free site is useful enough that I visit it regularly, I'll let them serve me ads.
I'll give you a personal example. If you do not have a Google+ account, but you have a Google account and GMail: You'll get annoying messages with "WHATS UP IN G+ DAWG" periodically and randomly.
But surely, you can unsubscribe? It's a bit obnoxious to opt-out, but hey, right? Nope! You need to "Log on Google+ to change your notification settings".
I don't want my search results, the YouTube videos I watch, my mail or ANY of my Google activity to be made available either to my friends or to the general public.
With a normal Google account I could say this with certainty. But given their behaviour recently I couldn't say the same thing with a Google+ account.
I have a Google+ account. Posts show up on my profile because I shared it publicly myself.
None of my search results, YouTube views, Email are public.
(Also it's stupid for me to reply to you given your history. But your reply is just not based on any facts.
I am hoping that Google bumps up security and visibility preferences for Google+ profiles in 2013.
What options are you wanting? In my experience Google+ is much more upfront about what gets shared to who than other social networks (especially Facebook). It's based around Circles and that's all about limiting who sees what.
Tying indeed. DOJ?
It may not be necessary for all Android activations (particularly CyanogenMod builds), but there are phones for which this is at the very least a practical, if not essential, requirement.
I know this for certain because if I actively try to access Google+ from any of the Google services, it asks me to first create one.
I have also never tried to change any Google service or access it differently so as to avoid Google+ account creation.
So, clearly, Google+ can be avoided, if you never had it.
That said, I do browse with scripting disabled (Google is not trusted by default and neither gmail, youtube or search require it) and I only log into Google services from trusted, i.e. personally owned, devices. I can read posts on plus.google.com with this configuration. I have also never given my real name to an online service account, except at the time of individual payments - financial information always claims among the highest protections of laws.
In my opinion, I think Google has been very fair with people who are only interested in access to their individual services, especially those that well predate Google+, without being bloated or forced away by the rest of their ever widening ecosystem.
Compared to Facebook and even Microsoft, Google is angelic in terms of access, privacy and service encapsulation considerations. I cannot compare to Apple since I only use them for music purchases.
What do I lose, even at this point?
- Youtube comments? That medium is 'watch only' for a long time already. Reading the comments hurts and was never funny or interesting. Writing comments didn't even cross my mind unless it's 4am and I had a beer or two too many.
- "Play" store reviews: That thing went basically into the direction of Youtube and was full of people that had no clue but liked to post stuff.
(Before anyone claims that G+ will make this better and so-called "real names" will fix that: Yeah, right. See HN. Twitter. Every other forum under the sun. I don't buy it)
Hangouts might be cool, but I couldn't care less about hangouts without people to hang out with. Since I never really joined G+ yet, this is a chicken and egg problem (public hangouts? Naah, not for me, I prefer text over video for most content). No G+ account, no G+ contacts, no need for that feature, period.
The only one time I felt I'm missing out was when my local Ingress resistance started organizing raids on G+. I'm mostly kidding, of course.
So, back to the point of the article: I see that they are trying really, really hard to sell G+ to the masses and integrate it everywhere. What I'd like to understand is: Do others feel that it works? That there really is 'no avoiding' G+?
I disagree.
Disclaimer: I don't use either social network, but in their stats facebook will consider me an inactive user and google will consider me an active user.
You don't have to use it, just like people don't have to use all of Apple's services, and as long as they are not too in-your-face about it.
"In-your-face" such as prompting me with a page-modal dialog every time I log into YouTube, demanding that I create a G+ account, and if I say "no" actually requiring a reason before the dialog will go away? I currently work around it by logging in, closing the tab when the dialog comes up, and opening a new tab.
While I agree that that's pretty in-your-face, that's not what GP was talking about.
Apple has merely provided SSO. All of its services have always been private (unless you explicitly share) and will always be. Google has taken what were private services e.g. YouTube and content and exposing that through a social network.
And for most people it is that blurring of the boundary between private and public that makes what Google is doing a bit concerning.
Seeing all that private activity with no way to capitalize on its inherent virality has driven Google away from their natural core. From a company which started out with an quirky barebones homepage, deliberately eschewing the natural monetizability of it, this new aggressive identity grab is a big cultural transformation.
For example, you can no longer comment on YouTube or write a review in the Play store without a G+ profile (or at least I can't). This means that activity in those Google properties is no longer pseudonymous. That is very unappealing to some.
From Google's point of view here there is only gain--YouTube comments are some of the lowest form of internet communication to be found. App reviews are not much better. Requiring people to have some sort of profile is not going to lower the quality of reviews, it will only limit their quantity (which is not the lacking factor).
I tried the G+ profile option for a while, but I didn't really like it. The first time I posted something publicly, people started commenting on my Google+ posts, apparently upset because they did not get the joke I made. Someone in the YouTube comments looked up my profile, figured out where I lived, and threatened to come to "BrookLine New York" to adjust my viewpoint. I found it hilarious but most people would probably be scared.
I switched back to using a real-name-inspired nickname. You blend in better and people won't bother you except in comment replies, which you can easily ignore.
http://www.rackspace.com/apps/email_hosting/rackspace_email/...
Edit: add URLs, TrueBlockPlus reference.
Sadly, though, I think the battle for privacy is largely lost. Too much is at stake for both FB and Google to play it nice. They will go as far as it takes to integrate themselves into every bit of our lives.
This is an exciting time to be an advertiser :)
Gmail's main selling point is the excellent web-interface, not the way the mail-store works well with IMAP.
As an alternate email address, for any number of a variety of reasons.
At the time Google lacked the pictured user profiles that every other app seemed to have and so Google Plus was born.
I think that the discrete social network is secondary and the competition with Facebook is constantly being overplayed by the media as the reason for this social play.
The author just seems oddly surprised that G+ is doing what it’s supposed to do.
Yep, outside of Youtube avatars, full-blown Orkut profiles, profiles and pictures used inside GTalk, and Blogger profiles there was barely anything.
And the reason Google+ is being integrated everywhere is because it is the only way they see themselves gaining traction against Facebook. Which right now is their primary online competitor for the almighty advertising dollar.
The discrete social network is definitely only a small cog in a much bigger machine, but debating whether it is a side effect or an intentional strategy is missing the point.
*as long as your name sounds like something normal for the US
Vic Gundotra disagrees.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/10/vic-gundotra-google...
After Google+ failed as a social network, despite Google using all their Google-muscle to shove it down everyone's throats, Vic Gundotra claims it's not a social network.
This is more about not admitting complete and utter defeat than anything else.
If Google+ is not a social network, why do I keep getting a million emails about people wanting to share stuff with me, hooking up with people, getting requested to add people "I may know" and a red notification-icon with "my notifications" in the top left screen of everything Google, despite me having opted out, requested my profile be deleted and disabled Google+ for my gapps domain?
Why does Google+ act as the desperate kid who is constantly trying to talk to you and be social all the time, if its not a social network?
If it was merely a profile-service, why would it constantly need to pester me, even after I've told it to go away a million times?
Google+ is easily the worst product Google has ever launched and has seriously damaged my impression of the company as a company just launching good services you can opt in to use, not the Microsoft which attempts to shove everything down your throat. Google Wave was a massive flop, but it was a flop you didn't have to use. And it didn't affect you. Google+ is different.
Make no mistake about it: Google+ is very, very bad. Bad execution. Bad product. And bad for Google's image as a whole.
Please give me a date that it failed as a social network, and a listing of "all the Google-muscle" shoving it down everyone's throats prior to that date. If you are correct, surely you can prove it?
> If it was merely a profile-service
I didn't say it was merely a profile-service. Neither did Gundotra. It's an integration package. You keep saying it's a product when it's not a product.
> Google Wave was a massive flop, but it was a flop you didn't have to use. And it didn't affect you.
Your objection to Google+ seems to be that it's successful, rather than it's a failure. The problem is that it's not quarantined away from your notice: that they managed to justify moving to phase two where they started actually using it.
You just don't want it to succeed.
You don't think he's just trying to move the goalpost to prevent one-to-one comparisons with Facebook since you know they aren't doing so well ?
Let's say you're utterly correct and G+ is nothing more than a Facebook clone.
Let's say you're utterly correct and G+ is doing really badly.
As a businessperson, what's the correct response?
I'm not giving you my name and face, Google, no matter how much I used to love you.
People have been saying this for the last 5 years.
I think it's time to reiterate a point that was made here a couple days ago that I think really outlines the reason that Facebook WILL be around for a while.
The comment that I'm referring to suggested that there's a "point-of-no-return" for a service where people are too deeply invested in it for any competing service to have a REAL fighting chance. That point of no return is when you have grandmas and grandpas, as well as little kids, and non-tech-savvy folks in general using the service (in this case FB) consistently and constantly.
To give you a personal example, my parents are the LAST people who I would expect to create a Facebook account. They are very technically unsavvy, but on top of that they're pretty skeptical people too. However, they finally got a Facebook account, and I think that highlights why Facebook WILL be around for many more years.
If you're going to use Myspace as an example, then don't, because Myspace NEVER reached the tipping point of Grandmas and Grandpas trying to use it. I think this goes for any service, not just a social network like Facebook. Take the iPhone and iPad for example. Same thing with that. You have grandmas, grandpas, and little children using iOS, so you know it's ingrained across multiple generations.
Now I'm not saying I'm 100% sure they're a rock-solid company, but I don't think people give them enough credit. It's far more popular to say "oh they'll be gone in a few years" than to actually understand and analyze the situation.
The Onion told me so: http://www.theonion.com/articles/number-of-users-who-actuall...
Those 4 people represent the reasons that I actually like FB. I really just like seeing what other people are up to in their lives as well as staying in touch with the people who are closest to me day-to-day. It's really that simple.
NOT to suggest that FB doesn't have it's issues or that we should take any pressure off the company, but at the end of the day, most of the little issues are easy to ignore, and it just becomes a useful tool that I like using.
Fun fact: I said Facebook would be dead by 2006.
I feel a little obligated, at this point, to admit I was wrong.