I have no idea whether Google+ will succeed or fail.
I do know a strategy that would have made it succeed because, when I was at Google, I proposed it.
I do know a strategy that would have made it succeed because, when I was at Google, I proposed it.
We needed to brand Google+ as a high-quality social network. That was well-understood to be the strategy, and it was intended as a long-term campaign. Start highbrow, dumb down harmlessly. This wouldn't be hard, because its early adopters were Googlers, who tend to be high-quality people.
What makes "social" so difficult for Google is that it's ideologically different from Search. In Search, you win if people get in and get out quickly. The less time they spend in getting through, the better you are doing. If you're a Facebook, though, you want people to spend time in your site. That's an ideological discrepancy between Google's very successful Search ideology (get the user in and out so fast the service is invisible) and what you need to do to win in Social.
You also need to generate comfort among your users, which is hard to do and can't be forced. Google+ has a lot of awesome tech in it (cf. Hangouts). It's a really neat piece of software. But people need to get into the product and get "comfortable" so they can start exploring. Early adopters explore right away. Most users want to be comfortable first. Facebook achieved "comfort" within an Ivy League college. It was just a silly thing your friends would see. It didn't start out as a general-purpose social network. Google+ lacked that luxury. It came into the social network space as a fully-fledged product and it's harder to establish social "comfort" that way. People are more comfortable with things that develop organically (cf. boiled frog).
This makes Games a critical battlefield. Games are a great way to bring people into the site, to get them comfortable, and to get them using the other goodies (e.g. Hangouts). If the games are good, they'll use your product a lot. It was also an arena in which Facebook seriously fucked up by not curating quality. Zynga damaged Facebook's reputation (and community quality, et al) in a major way. Mid-2011 was the nadir of its weakness on that issue. We needed to make that our strength by having some really awesome games. Where would we get them, though?
Google did Games, but not with the focus on quality. Again, this is success in Search hurting in Social. Google is admirably non-editorial when it comes to Search. What the web thinks is important is important. If you send someone to a crappy website (that he thought he wanted) so what? 5 seconds wasted, and then he types in a different query. It hardly ruins Google's brand that there's garbage on the Web. Google's job is just to document and facilitate, not to curate (with Search). The problem with Games is that people are looking for quality, but game quality isn't visible until someone plays it for 30 minutes. If you deliver someone a stinker, he resents you for wasting half an hour of his time. He'll associate you with the shitty Zyngarbage and never log in again. We needed to curate, but that doesn't scale, and the people in charge of game selection (while strong in general technical and project-management competence) did not know how to pick games.
So I came up with the Excellence In Games (EIG) initiative. Originally, I called it "Real Games" (a pun on Real Names). The idea was, instead of publishing dreck from mainstream publishers, who were giving us mediocre product because they didn't expect us to succeed, we court the independent developer community: the people who in 2013 are trolling Kickstarter for their 2D "retro" RPGs and German-style boardgames. We court these developers and give them a platform that does for them things they can't do for themselves, plus access to an enormous number of players. We also publish casual games, but only of high quality-- no Zynga dreck. By doing this, we create the image of being a gold standard for game quality. We keep the Google reputation-- we won't waste your time-- intact.
The engineers on the G+ Games team were huge fans of EIG and wanted to implement that instead of working with Zynga (who are apparently miserable to partner with) but the senior execs were not fans of this proposal. However, they were proven wrong. Google+ Games failed. Google did the smart thing and covered, which is why you've never heard of Google+ Games, but it's still an enormous missed opportunity.
In fact we have heard of Google+ Games. This is because you never fail to mention this perceived injustice at every available opportunity.
I can't imagine any situation in which "quality" games would have been the silver bullet you're portraying here. They wouldn't have hurt (in fact they wouldn't hurt now should such an effort start even at this "late" date). There has to be more. Something like Hangouts, or maybe even the sort of Google Reader integration we've seen over the last year. (I'll stipulate that GR sucks, but it's still very popular and most of its users have been effectively forced onto G+ to some extent.)
It appears from the outside that the manager who decided not to concentrate on games made the right decision.
Well, yes. Would you rather play a German-style board game using a MS Hearts interface or in a crisp, modern one using a Google+ Hangout? The latter obviously.
It appears from the outside that the manager who decided not to concentrate on games made the right decision.
"Not to concentrate on games" might have been the right decision-- the games space isn't a strong match for Google's proven competencies, so staying out of it may have been the best call-- but once Google decided to do Games, it needed to do them right. It didn't, because the right people weren't calling the shots.
We did want to make the games unobtrusive, of course. Games were just the draw that would bring people into the network. The idea was that they'd stay and use the features for other things.
I don't see any support for this assertion. When was this decision taken? How many people were allocated to this "need" and for how long? Google has a vast services portfolio and a vast user base. Rather than spending cycles on a complicated area that is not a core competence, why not leverage the many services that people already use to drive interaction with G+? (Which is what Google has actually done, so far as I can tell from the outside.)
As far as I was concerned, Google should probably not have entered the Games space. Why? Because curating game designs is not something it's set up to do, and the relevant competencies don't seem to be in the leadership. Going in, as far as I'm concerned, was a big risk.
My opinion was, and still is, that there are two reasonable strategies:
1. Don't enter Games with G+.
2. Enter Games and do it right.
I saw going into Games in the wrong way as something that would embarrass and kill the product, just as Zynga contributed to social network fatigue in 2011. However, that didn't happen. Google+ Games failed, but its failure hasn't hurt Google+ in a measurable way.
I still believe that unacceptable risk of embarrassment was taken, but the course that events took (G+ Games fails, but doesn't damage Google+ wholesale) was one that I did not predict.
Wouldn't the "real" games also want to launch on Facebook (and mobile), eliminating your edge?
The 6-month exclusivity would be a small cost (for the developer) compared to what we'd be offering, but give us just enough time to become the "go-to" site for this game, a long-standing advantage similar to the one that Facebook has in general "Social". Compound this across hundreds of high-quality games and G+ is the go-to site for games, even though those same games become available everywhere over time.
Of course, we'd also serve games that were already available in most places, like Angry Birds (a high-quality casual game, not Zyngarbage). However, we'd give the best terms to our brand-defining games that would have to start out exclusively with us.
and
"it [was] an enormous missed opportunity"
are not the same thing.
First, engineers familiar with the concept (including engineers responsible for working with Games) were unanimous in support of it. That's not proof of success in the market, but it's an indication. Engineers want to work on things they believe will succeed because it's good for their careers. No one thought Zyngarbage would improve the product.
Now, can I prove, beyond any doubt whatsoever, that this would have made G+ more successful in the market? No, I can't. You can't prove a counterfactual. However, it would have clearly helped. Excelling is never a bad thing, and Google has the resources necessary to afford excellence's short-term costs. Making Games more excellent would have both (a) made Google+ more excellent, and (b) brought people into the service who might otherwise have had no interest in joining "yet another" social network.
The Google way of doing things is to Excel First and Monetize Later. That's what they did with Search. It's what they needed to do with Social, but in Social, there's an added complexity... you actually need the people, and you need them to spend time in your product. So it's a different territory. Games are a great way to draw people into using a social network they wouldn't otherwise consider, but those Games need to be excellent enough to get repeat customers, so that people learn about all the other great things G+ offers (e.g. Hangouts).
Since Google+'s problems have been brand-related rather than technical (the technology's fine) I think it's fairly obvious that EIG was The Missed Opportunity of 2011. There may have been others, but EIG was the marlin.
Brand definition was going to be based on German-style board games (which could get people actually using Hangouts, for an awesome experience and a back-door demo of Hangouts) and 2D RPGs, to start. Many of these games would be new games from indie developers. Those two spaces would be place to get going, and there was no shortage of great ideas from engineers on other game spaces to explore after having success in those two.
So we were going to brand-define based on the "middle class" of games in terms of intensity: not mass-appeal casual, but not "gamer's games" with monstrous learning curves. We'd fill out to those spectra once we'd achieved brand definition.
I, like some other Googlers I know, regularly resist replying to his posts here. But he still hasn't let it go, so I'm going to give it a shot. Feedback from other HNers welcome.
THESE ARE MY OWN WORDS AND PERSONAL OPINIONS AND DO NOT REPRESENT ANYONE ELSE'S.
I'm a random Google engineer and a fan of Euro board games. When michaelochurch wrote his Real Games manifesto here, I thought he made some good points. He's obviously a smart guy, and his writing is long-winded but articulate. Then I watched in horror and fascination as he wrote one jaw-dropping mass email after another. I used to think he was a troll, but I now believe he's completely earnest, which ironically makes him the perfect troll. Since his short time at Google, he has continued to write screeds against Google's internal processes on one Hacker News story after another, where his passion and self-assurance makes him appear credible, when he appears to be suffering from the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
I have hesitated to get involved in these threads, figuring that it's not worth the effort, and knowing that it is asymmetrical, in three respects:
1. It's very difficult to effectively rebut Michael Church's extensive allegations with vague aspersions, but I can't cite specifics from internal discussion lists because they are confidential.
2. Michael Church is indefatigable. We saw what happened when Googler after Googler tried to engage in dialog with him, to reach out to him, to help him. I'm exhausted at the mere thought of trying to describe all the flame wars and all the dirt, much less voluntarily engaging with him now.
3. Personal attacks are distasteful, they're not "Googley," and even if true, they can end up reflecting badly on the attacker.
As the saying goes, "Never mudwrestle with a pig -- you both get dirty, but the pig likes it."
The last time I almost replied to michaelochurch and resisted, it was this post -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4715734 -- where he wrote:
> The lesson I learned from that ordeal is not to try to "save" a company from itself because you can't. You'll be seen as right, and possibly even lionized, long after you leave.
This is a quintessential example of his delusion. I say this, not for spite, but for truth: the notion that Michael Church is now "seen as right" inside Google, much less "lionized," is laughable. It literally provoked laughter.
Today, here, michaelochurch wrote:
> I do know a strategy that would have made it succeed because, when I was at Google, I proposed it.
Another quintessential example of his infinite confidence in his own ideas. Simply stunning. Imagine if someone said something like, "I do know a strategy that would have made the Ford Focus succeed because, not long after I was hired at Ford, I proposed it." You would rightly be skeptical, no matter how many thousands of passionate words he wrote on the subject over the following months and years.
I could give some more examples of things written on the web under the name Michael O. Church, but that risks entering the realm of "personal attacks" that I balk at for the reasons described above.
Instead, I'm gonna get back to work now. Thanks for reading. Like many before me, I wish Michael Church the best of luck, I harbor no ill will, and I hope he finds whatever makes him happy.
I was a troll for a few years of my life, but I kicked the habit. However, some of my Google work was White Hat Trolling. I was trying to use the skills I'd learned in my trolling years for good-- to improve the company. I actually had lined up my exit about a month before I left, so I did some purely altruistic work (including outing a bad manager) on the way out.
You'll be seen as right, and possibly even lionized, long after you leave
Emphasis on "long". One year is not "long".
Five years from now, people at Google probably won't remember Google+ Games and I hope they don't remember me by name. Although I was right on G+ Games, I was right on something that seems to have been unimportant.
What I realize about my time at Google is that I wasted a lot of energy on minor issues. For example, C++ is not my favorite default language (it has its niche, but modern web development is not it). It sure as hell is not evil. Not a battle worth fighting. (Now that I've learned C and C++ a bit better, I enjoy them.) Google's HR practices-- closed and blind allocation, 18-month transfer block (extortion), manager-as-SPOF through secret calibration scores-- are Evil. If anyone is going to take up the cause of purging Google of rot, slime, and hate (not to say that Google has more of these than most large companies; I doubt it does, but few companies have "Don't Be Evil" as a motto) then that is where to strike.
What I am sure of is that, five years from now, no company will be able to call itself a cultural leader while retaining closed allocation. So, if Google wants to remain a cultural leader, it has no other choice than to implement open allocation. And hey, that's an idea that I was one of the first to propose.
Emphasis on "long". One year is not "long".
Ha, okay. I suppose we'd just have to take this to longbets.org.