"thing I use to send email" and "thing I use to watch music videos" are not conceptually distinct?
Most users would send as emails to others the kinds of things they leave as comments on youtube?
Most users would send as emails to others the kinds of things they leave as comments on youtube?
Google reads my GMails from major airlines, and shows me when my next flight is when I Google Search for "when is my next flight". The flight also just pops up on Google Now on my Android phone. It also knows where I am, and where the airport is, so it tells me how long it will take to drive there.
When I Google search for La Cucaracha on my desktop, when I walk out to my car and look at my phone, it automatically suggests Navigating to La Cucaracha.
When I Subscribe to a YouTube video, it automatically shows up in my GMail as a feed.
I find value in these things, and I'm sorry you don't.
The frustration comes from removing the option of customizing my profile for each service.
Banana72...? Oh, right, on YouTube VikingCoder is called Banana72.
I think you're asking for a feature which would confuse the hell out of most users.
I managed to find a decent looking study that somewhat supports my position [1]. Here's an interesting quote from the abstract:
"many (40%) were hesitant to consent to the release of their personal profile information; and (6) many (36%) ex- pressed concern with the use of SSO on websites that contain valuable personal information or, conversely, are not trust- worthy. We also found that with an improved affordance and privacy control, more than 60% of study participants would use Web SSO solutions on the websites they trust."
[1] https://cups.cs.cmu.edu/soups/2011/proceedings/a4_Sun.pdf
This is a very important discussion -- I'd love to see some papers that study the benefits of a single login / profile, rather then the negatives.
How people say they will act, and how they act, are completely different animals.
I think he had a Group Youtube channel. He logged in using his individual account onto his Group Youtube channel and it linked his individual G+ to the group Youtube. When he unlinked this, it disable his Group Youtube.
I think this is pretty serious stuff. If youtube allows you to group individual accounts, then you dont want to link a group channel to an individual account. I think thats the concerns being raised here.
Ultimately, do you agree with the direction, and can you forgive them for the missteps?
I mean, how many times was "re-install Microsoft Windows, and all of your applications" the only option?
I get that it's painful for some people, and I don't mean to diminish that. But my God, this guy wasted an entire afternoon on configuring his free service.</sarcasm>
The OP is merely expressing what a lot of people are experiencing, and not just technical people. I know plenty of non-technical people who avoid mainstream Google because it's like "getting a passport" and "signing over your life" just to upload a video.
The user experience of being part of YouTube is crap. The barrier to entry is too heavily weighted towards "registration" and "validation" rather than just having fun and joining something fun.
Email is NOT related to Youtube, not by any stretch. So you get emamiled when someone posts a video? Wow, that really is lame. That notification could happen a million different ways, including an email to your Yahoo email address.
Google forces completely different services to be connected. It's no longer possible to rate a video out of 5 unless you have a Google+ account. It's no longer possible to have a Google+ account unless you provide Google your mobile phone number and access to all your contacts, etc etc.
Youtube was once a cool service for YOU, US. Now it's a service for "content partners" and YOU/WE are permitted to join in, provided that certain commercially motivated conditions are met. That's crap. It's like a movie cinema denying entry unless you wear a (free) t-shirt advertising their cinema. VikingCoder would say "hey, it's a free t-shirt, what are you complaining about". Well, I just want to watch a film, I do not want to be locked into the Cinema's desperate social media marketing eco-system.
Navigating to La Cucaracha, i.e., literally to The Cockroach?
Is there really a place called La Cucaracha? I would have expected Google to show ads for exterminator services or maybe a link to a YouTube video featuring the La Cucaracha song … ;)
I've always wondered how Chi-Chi's stayed in business, BTW.
Well then good for you, and you should be able to merge all your accounts with Google into one; but why should this be almost compulsory?
What's more, if there's so much value into this, why does Google have to force its users to do it?
Quite often here on Hacker News we sit around and talk about how removing features or options from an App is often the best thing to do for usability. I think this is true. At the same time every time this comes up with regards to Google or some other large company the response flips around completely.
Ultimately I think the readership here is just the 10% of users that want the option, exactly the group we often say that should be ignored for the overall good of the product.
It's Google becoming more and more mainstream. It's Lowest Common Denominator Google.
Every revision, something else is gone. Another menu is missing, another option.
After scouring enough Google Support forums, tinkering in enough settings and trying enough workarounds, it's the only solution I can come to.
Google isn't the hacker search engine we fell in love with over a decade ago.
It's an advertising company looking to monetize on a user's lack of privacy to help connect them with advertisers. Adwords is 99% of their business. We can't just ignore that forever.
The lowest common denominator of user is the the type of user is probably most susceptible not controlling their privacy well enough and for Google being able to target them widely. How much does Google really care about us ad-block toting hacker types anyway?
Not happy with the options in there service, use something diffrent.
So you want your every identity online to be tied together? Your usenet posts to alt.sex.hello-kitty, your responses to ads on Craigslist, your interactions with old friends on facebook, your interactions with professional contacts on linkedin (if you use it), your interactions on some neighborhood blog, your political commentary on some political blog, whatever?
After all, if you were describing all of them, you'd use the word "I"!
Or do you acknowledge that there's clearly a balance of benefit and pain, and Google is merely slightly to the wrong side of where you'd want them to be?