The Tragic Beauty of Google+ | Hacker News Reader

The Tragic Beauty of Google+

stratechery.com

38 pointsmonkbent27 comments

I have hit a "tragic" bug of Google+ and I don't even have Google+. It is this one:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chat/tA22alXeQ...

I found out that my elderly mother for the last couple of days could not message me via Google's chat. And I couldn't message her. It was very odd. Eventually after a day of messing with it I noticed that her status was "blocked on Google+".

The kicker is, I never signed up for Google+ and neither signed her up for Google+. Nothing was fixed for days. The only work-around I found was to ... surpise... create a Google+ account. And lo and behold, my mother and other small group of friends ended up in the list of Google+ blocked list. Apparently Google+ block list also overrides regular block lists from other services and does it silently.

Of course I created the stupid Google+ account, unblocked the contacts then immediately deleted it. But it certainly left with a nasty taste in my mouth. It almost seems like a sneaky attempt to make me sign up for Google+.

I kept hearing of stories about people's accounts being locked and them losing their email, contacts, and other data and always thought it was just odd random incidents, now I am starting to get worried. It seems Google is become more aggressive and cavalier with my profile and my data.

(yes, yes, I know I am not paying for it, it is free and I am not a customer, I am the product being sold to their real customers -- the ad buyers).

The best google products have largely succeeded on their own merit. Google+ is not one of them. Google+ is the product you start shoving in your users' faces because you are angry they are not adopting it. And the less people adopt, the more you force it on your users. Ultimately, this is why good companies fail and while google is far from failing, I really don't think google+ has added much value in this world which is extremely uncommon for a google product that gets so much press.

It is the worst product to come out of google to date. I wish it dies.

Google has now tied Gmail id to YouTube id (which I never cared to have).

If you sign out of YouTube, you're signed out of Gmail.

I am not a happy camper.

I think the new photo features announced yesterday alone are worth it. It will save people from countless hours of photoshopping. I just hope they integrate those features into Picasa.

I just hope they integrate those features into Picasa.

May be when they rename Picasa to Google+.

If this was the case, they'd fix the accounts system. Nothing I do on the web is ever tied to my G+ account because I have 5 different Google accounts and it's a crapshoot which one I'm signed into at any given time. One thing is for sure, though, that I'm never signed into the one that my Google+ account is tied to since you couldn't use Google apps accounts at launch to sign up for G+.

You're in the minority and I'd suspect your anomalous data is lost in the noise.

While I think Google+ came out the gate as a budding Facebook killer, and given the initial internal alignment of the company tying everyone's yearly bonus to its success, I suspect Google was hoping for exactly that, no matter how much retro conning the tech bloggers spin.

Because the two things that killed Google+'s chances were first the ridiculous real names debacle which was a literal turd in the punchbowl corporate move, followed shortly thereafter by internally flip-flopping and reassigning the bonus for Google+'s success to the Google+ team and the Google+ team alone, safely ensconced away from the googler scum in their tawp sekrit(tm) tower on the Googleplex.

This. This. This. Constantly I am being pleaded with to create a Google+ account, although I already have one. Google's inability to effectively combine accounts is one of my greatest frustrations.

"it’s an identity system that follows you everywhere"

Yeah, that really sounds like a good thing...

Google wants you to participate in an "identity system that follows you everywhere", so they can learn your behavior and preferences and show you relevant, timely ads. Facebook wants exactly the same thing, for exactly the same reason. Both services want you to stay logged in as long as possible. Both services offer authentication for 3rd-party sites to give you even more reasons to be logged in. The author sees a difference that I don't believe exists.

...said the person with the username "onemorepassword".

Even though Google+ was/is compared to facebook...I don't think it is much like it. All I have really seen bloom from Google+ is hangouts with live streaming. I constantly hear businesses or other devs promoting a hangout feed.

Facebook I felt was more for the intimacy of family and friends; personal profile.

Linkedin for resumes and job experience; professional profile.

Google+ ... so far has really been promoted as a tool of Google's that is no different than Wallet, Gmail, Voice...or Google Reader. By a tool, I imply that the niche Google+ is carving is hangouts.

Please feel free to reply and tell me what/if you guys use Google+ and what for.

Side note: I'm a developer, and I closed my facebook and never opened a Google+ (at least by choice -_-, don't you love how Google automatically signs you up for G+).

Something that is not always readily apparent about an online community (or tool for socializing) is that features do not define the utility of the tool. Because the net benefit of the tool is the socializing and sharing, the culture within the community tends to define how the tool is used and how users benefit.

Facebook has a culture of sharing entertainment of any kind with people you know.

Google+ has a culture of sharing experiences and photographs with people that share your interests.

Some of this culture evolved from how the tool was built, in particular how you lump people into circles relating to topics of interest and channels of physical connection, as well as how the content is displayed to the users.

Most users will decide on the community culture they want to be a part of.

Why do designers keep thinking that splitting a feed into two staggered columns is a good idea? It makes it much harder to skim down a feed to find a particular post, because your eye naturally wants to skim in straight lines, not zig-zag back and forth.

This seems to me like a classic case of designers thinking of visual "prettiness" first and actual utility second.

Facebook did this for a while with Timeline, until they fixed it with the newer Timeline which keeps the posts to one column. It really looks like Google+ is just ape-ing Facebook design, even when the design has implicitly been admitted to have been a bad idea.

I am willing to be persuaded otherwise, though, if someone wants to make the case.

Personally, I like it because it limits column width which makes it easier for me to read text.

You actually can switch to a single-column layout in Plus under the "More" menu. It still limits column width, however, and when I've pointed that out to people that complain about multi-column, the response has generally been "but then you have so much wasted space!"

Seems like a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation to me.

Top pane > More > Stream Layout

I like G+ and might be one of the millions who _don't_ have a facebook account , but are quite happy with a G+ account. I don't think its tragic, I just think they are paying attention to users like me, who you know use their service.

This is bizarre. This piece insinuates, with not a shred of evidence, that Google+ identity data is linked to Google Analytics data, and there is zero evidence that this is the case, or that it even makes any sense. (For starters, Google Analytics tracking code never touches the google.com domain in any kind of way and thus couldn't be used to link to account information.)

From their official blog: "What does this mean in practice? The main change is for users with Google Accounts. Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you've provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience."

http://googleblog.blogspot.se/2012/01/updating-our-privacy-p...

Boom - and that includes Google Analytics:

"At Google, we are keenly aware of the trust you place in us and our responsibility to keep your privacy and data secure. As part of this responsibility, we let you know what information we collect when you use our products and services, why we collect it, and how we use it to improve your experience. The Google privacy policy & principles describes how we treat personal information when you use Google's products and services, including Google Analytics."

http://www.google.com/analytics/learn/privacy.html

Where in there does it say that personal traffic information is linked to Google+ information?

Sorry, but that's not what that means. There are settings that allow people to opt to link their Google Analytics accounts to, say, AdWords or Webmaster Tools, but that's at the website owner level, not at the individual-navigating-the-web level.

There's simply no evidence that increased data sharing across Google involves linking Google Analytics data to individual personal accounts on Google+.

(If anything, the trend at Google is towards less integration between GA and Google Accounts; for example, Google now prevents Google search terms for logged-in Google Accounts users from getting passed in the referrer for search traffic.)

It clearly states that Google will correlate your information on all services. Please take time to read my post again. Speaking of evidence: I believe it's your time to provide some if you want to dispute this, "the trend at Google" just won't cut it.

> for example, Google now prevents Google search terms for logged-in Google Accounts users from getting passed in the referrer for search traffic.

But if you buy Google Ads you still get that information. That speaks volumes.

Then how come I need to be on google.com to view the analytics data? I'd love to be wrong about this and will correct.

The Google Analytics JavaScript is hosted on google-analytics.com, as is the Google Analytics pixel.

Google Analytics cookies are first-party cookies, so are tied to the domain of the website you're on, not Google.

Google Analytics data, unless manipulated to be otherwise by the end user with a manual customization, is not systematically tied to personalized Google+ traffic information. There's never been any evidence otherwise, and honestly, the burden of proof is typically on the accuser when making these kinds of accusations, so, really, I flip the question to you and ask what evidence do you have for this accusation besides insinuation and conspiratorial instinct?

Fair. I updated the post.

UPDATE: Edited again per the info in this thread; Google Analytics does track Google+

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