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Comment by capo | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, no shit! I’m not quite sure what is the point of that article, because it’s fairly obvious that the main reason for which Plus was conceived is to be the uniform identity provider for commenting, reviewing, and overall communicating throughout Google’s services.

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.

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>> At the time Google lacked the pictured user profiles that every other app seemed to have

Yep, outside of Youtube avatars, full-blown Orkut profiles, profiles and pictures used inside GTalk, and Blogger profiles there was barely anything.

The fact that he specifically talks about Google's Google+ never crossed your mind, right?

Google+ is a social network. The only person who thinks otherwise is you:

http://plus.google.com

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.

I strongly disagree. Google made their strategy very clear on day one with their choice of name for this new endeavor: Google+. The "augmented" version of Google as a whole.

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.

Google+ is an information-gathering service for Google's ad networks, disguised as a social network; that's why it's being integrated everywhere. Eyeballs are kinda secondary...

Every time someone bitched about their "real names only"* policy, G+'s defenders would insist that Google doesn't see it as a social network, but as an identity service.

*as long as your name sounds like something normal for the US

> Google+ is a social network. The only person who thinks otherwise is you:

Vic Gundotra disagrees.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/10/vic-gundotra-google...

http://mashable.com/2012/06/29/google-plus-problem/

> Vic Gundotra disagrees.

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.

> 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.

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.

Shorter Vic G: "You can't separate it from the operating system!"

This will probably be the first time I've upvoted one of your comments, but I have to admit that this one was right on.

Well Vic better update the website then. Because a site that mentions "share the right things with the right people" and then has games, photos, events and videos sure sounds pretty similar to Facebook to me.

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 ?

I'm not going to argue that Google+ doesn't fit some definition of "social network". But what's up with the snarky comments? How about sticking to an argument, instead of making comments like "The only person who thinks otherwise is you", which isn't even true?

> 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?

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