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Comment by onemorepassword | Hacker News Reader

"Request an invite".

Dear god, Google still thinking it's a cute little startup. It really is the Microsoft story all over again.

This is echo chamber mentality. Why does request-an-invite imply little startup? It just happens to be a strategy startups regularly employee, but why is it only legitimate for startups? Your criticism is hard to parse any other way than that you don't like Google, so whatever they do you find an interpretation of how their behavior is disingenuous and annoying. How the wider consumer world will view this is an open question, but I very much doubt anyone but the tech 1% will even have this thought cross their mind.

Would you want a billion new users all slamming your brand new codebase and infrastructure all at the exact same time?

Sure Google can handle scale better than anyone, but a stampede is still a stampede. Soft launches are way safer and easier to manage.

And that's only half of it. Users that are likely to request an invite are more likely to be technically savvy and provide better feedback than "maps is b0rked. plz fix!!11". If you are going to have to deal with feedback, it's much better to not have to sift through low quality feedback during the early days of launching a new product.

"Sure Google can handle scale better than anyone"

Spoken like someone who has never tried to buy tickets to Google IO!

But on a serious note, there are some products at Google that clearly scale well beyond what most other groups are capable of, but there are some products at Google that... don't.

Like any big company, things aren't completely uniform across the board.

I believe the "drip-feed" invite idea suffocated Google Wave. When it first came out I was begging my inbox & skype for invites. Once I finally got in it was ... a wasteland. I dished out invites like there was no tomorrow but in all honesty, if people could JUST sign up, I might have had someone to talk to.

Who knows, maybe it might still be running. I'm not sure if there were other factors but personally it never made sense to me.

I believe if Google really wanted to, they could go from 0 to 1 million users in minutes.

Agreed on wave. We wanted to use it for projects but there was always the 10% of the team that didn't have access.

That seemed like the perfect way not to introduce a product oriented toward collaboration.

Google has been using A/B testing for quite some time I think; they even do it with Chrome nowadays. Wouldn't that work to manage load?

You mean instead of handing out N invites, just pick N users at random? Why would that be better? You confuse and potentially upset the randomly-chosen users, and you disappoint the eager people who actually want to try the new thing.

When google does first-come first served (Google I/O last year) they get dinged. When they do randomized (Nexus4 initial sale and this year's I/O) they get dinged.

Fact is, they can't satisfy everyone. The algorithm used to differentiate the few from the many will obviously upset some groups.

Would you rather they charge for it? That'd be the Microsoft thing to do [1].

[1] http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1011983/microsoft-t...

The problem with Google I/O is that it was not actually first come first served, but random. As in: the registration site gets pound so hard that you need to be lucky to be able to load the page and proceed with your registration.

Also, for Google I/O it would have served to have people apply, and review applications to pick real developers and not dumbass unable to read a line of code but hoping for a cool gadget to flip on ebay.

Anyway, as much as I want to try the new map right away I would do the invite system like them: you get to ramp up your userbase progressively, and people trying it actually want to try it (not grandma opening Maps and being completely confused by the new UI and possible bugs).

I suppose neither are ideal, really. With an invite only model you run the risk of biasing your feedback. The advantage of a random rollout would be the marketing sleight of hand: "gradual rollout" might be more defensible than "by invitation".

Gmail and Google Groups have both had random rollouts for changes, with optional rollbacks. That seems more fitting (to me at least).

IO is the place to launch new products. It's just slightly more impressive than showing a message "And btw. we've lunched this new version of maps. Check it out (with the probability of 0.00053846)".

Facebook has consistently done the same thing with all of their new features (Graph Search, Timeline, etc). I fail to see why this is so egregious?

It's the disconnect between what Google is (the 800 pound gorilla that can roll out a new product like an appliance manufacturer can roll out a new toaster), and how Google sees itself (the brave disruptive startup launching something cool in private beta).

It's the same disconnect that we know from Microsoft, that couldn't see itself as the monopolist they were, because their self-image was still that of the little startup that took on the mighty IBM.

Of course it could all just be marketing, like every word out of Google these days is just marketing without substance.

Either way, Google doesn't listen to user feedback and is perfectly capable of rolling out a new product on a global scale. "Request an invite" is BS.

You sound very biased against Google. In that particular case, I think the new Maps is not ready for prime launch yet. I think two things tend to prove that this is the truth: no Google Maps API are available for this new Maps, the presenter (forgot his name) mentioned that they were not ready for prime time; also for other products announced today, they rolled them out right away (new Google+, new Google Music, etc.) so why would they not release this one?

> It's the disconnect between what Google is (the 800 pound gorilla that can roll out a new product like an appliance manufacturer can roll out a new toaster), and how Google sees itself (the brave disruptive startup launching something cool in private beta).

How do you know this? I find this Request a clever way to stagger the release of the update. In case there happens to be any issues then only those who volunteered for the update would be affected, hopefully resulting in slightly higher patience.

and how Google sees itself (the brave disruptive startup launching something cool in private beta).

What? Since when has launching a product to a small audience and gathering feedback been something that only a startup is allowed to do?

The difference between a software launch and appliance product launch is that not everyone immediately goes and buys that new product. It slowly penetrates the market and feedback from the first buyers gives the manufacturer a chance to make minor modifications and deal with any issues. If Google flipped the switch and enabled the new maps with a flaw that went unnoticed until consumer use, they could potentially bring the whole service down.

Also, your negativity makes you sound very disgruntled.

I don't know why you assume that an invite system is something that's "cool" or only a viable strategy for small companies. It's a good and reasonable way to scale a new product.

They could at least tell you which account has been signed up. Everything's so easy with 1-click, but now that I have multiple accounts signed in at the same time, I have no idea which one requested the invite and I'm going to have to continue to watch _all_ my inboxes... if it has an Android part, which it better, I sure hope I've linked the right account to the invite so that the device can download the app.

grumble grumble

It actually looks cool though.

This and all those other places offering a Google Oauth option prevents me from logging in to multiple accounts on my main browser (Chrome). Although if you do a Google Oauth, it will let you select which email you want to use. I hardly use anything else apart from my personal Apps account, and hence it makes sense to have only a single login on your main browser.

If you set up multiple Chrome users (Settings > Add New User), you can log into multiple google accounts at once.

You would hope -- I noticed the same issue. I ended up just opening an incognito window and logging into my main account that I use for e-mail and requested an invite there. Hopefully that'll make sure at least something lands into an inbox I check.

I'm not going to complain though, I just want to try it out!

Haha... I did exactly the same thing. After, I realized it was so easy that it's really dumb to complain about it.

Not having immediate access to something makes people automatically want it more (generally).

In general people don't like ads for things they cannot have.

You'd be surprised.

People literally lust into ads for "things they cannot have".

That's also part of the success of all the "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" style shows and magazines on the poor/middle class.

What about movie trailers?

"coming to theaters July 4th..."

"Independence Day 2: American Freedom"

The first person to comment sets the narrative.

A.k.a. "The above-the-fold syndrome"

To add to that, Google has consistently done invite rollouts in their past like Gmail and Google+ to name a couple.

Early on, in the "startup" stage which seems to be the point that comment was making.

No, they don't want to open this up to everyone until they can confirm that ad revenue is unaffected by the changes.

That's a very good strategy - testing new features by controlled rollout so that their potential revenue impact can be fully analyzed. Every company that lives on profit should adopt that strategy.

Thanks for point it out.

It's the reason we still have the Google Black Bar when they highly publicized a new navigation last year. It hurt traffic to their other properties.

I like the black bar. It is simple and it works.

I don't hate it, but if you have a nice new tab page (i use speeddial 2 for chrome (and I have a link to calendar and drive)), I don't imagine someone using it that often.

exactly, this has nothing to do with ability to rollout, rather marketing (create desire), test profitability (do users come back more often)

It seems legitimate that they'd want to stagger the release of this. I think it's better for everybody that they do it in a way that those who want it, will use it and are interested get it first. Have you seen what the average user thinks when Facebook redesign things?

It could be worse, they did the same thing with Glass but then charged $1500 for the benefit of being chosen.

That said, I think it makes sense. Ask Apple how it feels to make a drastic change with maps.

Glass is hardware, it's not like they're going to give it away for free.

they gave me a laptop for free.

Seems like a smart decision to me. I probably wouldn't have cared about GMail if thirteen year old me didn't want an invite more than anything. Anyway, it's still a gradual rollout, just with hype. Seems like a smart decision to me if they don't overuse the gimmick.

>I probably wouldn't have cared about GMail if thirteen year old me didn't want an invite more than anything.

A 13 year old wanted "more than anything" a ...Gmail invite of all things?

Speaking as someone who was also 13 around the time GMail was doing their invite thing, yes. I coveted that thing. I listened to TWiT with Leo Laporte and heard them talk and talk about it, and scoured web forums looking for one.

It's not that weird really.

I think coldtea was implying that there's something else that 13 year old boys (assumption from GP name) generally want more than anything, and it's generally a bit more physical than Gmail invites.

Not to mention they don't listen to ..."TWiT with Leo Laporte "!

Man I loved that podcast for some reason. I was a weird kid.

The only thing else I really wanted was video games, which were effectively not allowed in my household.

That was my first thought as well. Nope. Not going to go begging for a Google invite this time. I can see throttling your users to help test the product, but it's a Maps app for goodness sake. Maybe something other than "Invite" would be more palatable, like "Sign Up for Beta" for instance.

Exactly. I don't need to see it rolled out at maps.google.com for the world to start using, but I'd at least like to be able to follow a link to TRY it after seeing it in the keynote.

They even share the obsession with finding a place to eat in San Francisco.

Invite-only creates hype around your product. Google wants people to Tweet and post on Facebook: "I got an invite into the new Google Maps!". Simple marketing.

I think this type of thing risks tiring people out though. There are only so many times people can get excited about getting an invite to a new service before it feels like chasing old highs.

I clicked the link before looking at the comments. I saw "request an invite", sighed, and hit the back arrow.

I'm tired of Google request-an-invites, and it was a reaction completely independent of the comments here (which I hadn't yet seen).

Something to think about, I guess.

Or even share on Google+

… on second thought, I'm sure even Google knows they'd be preaching to the choir there.

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