That's a fun trick Google
impressmyself.co
impressmyself.co
The intent here is reasonable: They have dozens of services with dozens of comment engines and user-systems and they need to consolidate that crap into something more coherent. Picasa/YouTube do functionally similar services but one uses video and one uses pictures, so it makes sense for Google to try to make their common-ground more common.
The problem is that fundamentally, G+ was too opinionated and Google leadership was too polite. The relationship should've been the other way around - G+ needed to be more flexible (better support for anonymous/pseudonymous posting) while Google should've moved decisively instead of soft-peddling it so many times and breaking promises to the users that implied that they had a choice about these changes. You can't not-have Plus.
What they should've offered is "I don't want a Plus homepage" and "I don't want to participate in Circles" which is an agreement they could have honoured.
You should write an article on that (:
But in general, it seems clumsy and not very well thought-out or designed. A feature meant for allowing company websites is hacked into pseudonyms.
But either way, in any other general-purpose comment-engine, the host of the channel/blog/page/whatever would be able to allow/deny anonymous or pseudonymous users. AFAIK, all YouTube allows is whether you want to allow or deny comments in general.
- tumblr.com
- googleapis.com
- netdna.bootstrapcdn.com
- ogp.me
- google-analytics.com
- yimg.com
- nol.yahoo.com
Think you could tone that down?
There is a more complete discussion on the network security stackexchange group[0].
[0] http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/38415/privacy-ri...
Or ... are you using their services while moaning about it? No, I'm sure you wouldn't do that.
Why does anyone think that? It's often economically rational for a customer to say "I'd like to continue using your product/service, but I have a specific complaint about it."[1] That's what all these posts about Google+ are doing.
It's not like anyone's shouting "We need to pass laws against this, right now!" Nobody is questioning Google's legal and moral right to force Google+ on us. Rather, people are saying it's a poor choice and Google's part, and it annoys customers.
[1] These issues are discussed in Exit, Voice, and Loyalty:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty
The basic idea is that an aggrieved consumer can either take their business elsewhere, which is termed "exit," or try to change the company's behavior through things like the OP's blog post, which is termed "voice." Customers sometimes choose voice as their first recourse, and if things get worse or don't improve, the customers sometimes exit.
For example, people mostly didn't leave Facebook after getting the message that Facebook is bad for privacy, but in the early days of Facebook I could find nearly every single one of my friends' phone numbers and home addresses on their profiles, and the "phone book" feature was very useful. Now, hardly anyone puts their address there, only a minority put their phone numbers there, and the "phone book" feature is mostly forgotten (I don't even know if they've removed it, I haven't looked for it in a couple of years at least). What kinds of photos people post, and how much they share, has changed a lot over the years, but most of the people who pulled back in this way didn't delete their accounts, and still post material there when they don't care much if it "leaks".
I've observed a similar thing with Google services over the past couple of years. People pull back by shifting some of their activity to other providers, while continuing to heavily use Google.
Your inability to understand that is just not relevant.
Whether the author continues to use Google services is utterly and completely irrelevant. The point of contention here is the sleazy way Google re-activates a service for them after they have explicitly disabled it. If your answer to this dilemma is to stop using Google services altogether, then I'm sorry but you just lost all credibility and will not be taken seriously.
Only if you think blaming the victim is reasonable.
Look, everyone knows that alternatives to Google exist. The problem here is that Google has pulled a massive bait and switch on its entire userbase. They started as a company that put its users first, and over time turned into one that tries to extract as much money from users as possible. And while it is possible to switch to other services, for a lot of people and companies this involves a significant time investment as well as an upheaval of processes and resources.
Heck, as a single individual, my Gmail address is listed in at least 25 different locations. Remembering what those are and then changing them alone would take me hours. And then there's static documents with my email address on them - resumes, cover letters, business letters, business cards, and more. Finally, there is the question of whether my new email provider offers integrated solutions for instant messaging, content sharing and collaboration, calendar, and more.
Basically, Google is a monopoly -- not in the sense of market-share but rather in terms of the completeness of their offering, and they are abusing the shit out of this. That's what's making people angry, and they have every right to be angry.
Yes.
To its credit, Google has a couple of fecal units worth of dashboards and data about retention and quality so somewhere there is a chart where the line has started to go flat, perhaps even down. Questions will be raised, bonuses will be put into jeopardy, and eventually a new consensus or messaging will be reached. It will be interesting to see if the company has reached the point where its ability to respond yet fatally trails the markets ability to change. Every company seems to get to that point eventually.
1. Finally got my Google+ deleted. The reason I even had one to begin with was that Google forced it on me.
2. Started using DuckDuckGo, took about a month to get used to, but I am starting to like it more and more, not sure if I would go back to Google even if they weren't info vamps.
3. I could migrate to another email provider, but I am waiting it out for a bit longer to see what interesting alternatives pop up in the wake of this. But at that point, forwarding and phasing in a new email should be relatively easy.
4. Waiting it out with messaging, but will definitely move of GTalk/Hangouts for non-work.
I don't have anything to hide from Google, but their pushy approach is making me sick. It is just not worth doing business with people like this.
2) I've also switched to DDG, but I still find that google gives me somewhat better results for things related to programming are academics. Apart from that, I like DDG a lot.
3) That's the big, big problem for me. I could stop using virtually any other product labelled google without problem (ok, youtube excluded), but gmail keeps me there. Not so much that gmail itself is so great (it is good, for sure), but the act of switching emails, updating contacts left and right, is just a pain.
4) it seems to me that most providers for hangout/video type of things are equally obnoxious with the way they handle your data..
Going back to the email stuff, I guess I'm also waiting for a decent alternative to pop up, as I'm not inclined to switch 10 times in the next 6 months..
For me it is especially great since my primary email is an alias domain on Google Apps, which means i can move my primary email off of google apps while keeping my google account working (also grandfathered into their free plan).
So switching email is just the matter of picking my own host. That could take a while, however.
In case anyone missed them and is interested a thread on HN recently gave some recipes and outlines for setting up email servers.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6748670
There are a few in the thread besides the OP.
(Posting again here so you (might) be notified.)
As for email - if I can not connect with IMAP, I am still using the plain old HTML web interface for GMail. The new one has too much clutter. But I am also searching for an alternative with good uptime.
As such, Gmail is the only thing that keeps me connected with google. Any alternatives?
I am not a fan of the iphone and being in the tech field it feels difficult to go back to a nokia 5110. Guess ubuntu or firefox OS is the way?
I learnt that when they stopped supporting their news reader. It forced me to look at what had been out there all along, but I had simply not looked because their reader was good enough. They taught me in this way to look for alternatives that are often better.
For instance, I've come to appreciate the features at: https://duckduckgo.com/?q= For search.
Google isn't any more evil than they have ever been - they are however huge and it's almost certain that some aspect of what they do will rub lots of people the wrong way.
I don't avoid them like the plague, but I also don't stick to services I don't like and I suggest as much as I can seeking out alternatives.
If you don't like being the product that is sold, leave. If you like the trade for the value you get, than it's worked out well for you. I can't blame them for making an offer you chose to accept.
That seems like the optimal place for Google to be. Aware of its user's complaints, but also aware that they haven't moved on, as well as what alternatives are being brought up.
I realized that this was always the case! When I signed up for GMail in beta (remember they had ads based off your email BUT you got a gig)
I still use Google and I use Google+ shot me :)
Can't we all just agree that Google is pretty great, but going through an annoying phase right now? Google _is_ taking advantage of the fact that most users won't leave, and I don't appreciate that. But at the same time, we are all slowly losing our patience, and in the long run this behaviour could hurt Google. I hope for everyone's sakes that this all settles down.
Search----> Bing
Drive ----> Dropbox,Ubuntu one
Picasa ----> Dropbox
Gtalk ----> whatsapp, Skype
Chrome ---> Firefox
Analytics ---> ?
Any suggestions here?
It makes a lot more sense to moan about something you use than to moan about something you don't. For example, I don't moan about how bad Katy Perry's album is because I don't own that album. I don't moan about how uncomfortable the seats in my old car were because I don't drive it anymore. I do moan about poor pick-up time estimates at a restaurant I frequent because I am actually their customer.
The idea that you should only complain about things you don't use is bizarre.
What a far cry from '99-'03 Google, which used to release clever and surprising new data-browsing tools, each with a singular purpose, that just worked.
Yeah, I happen to like the integrated Google. When I get GMail confirming a flight, it automatically shows up in my Google Now. I can search for it with "When is my next flight?" I can search my Docs and Gmail both at once.
I happen like how far Google has gotten from those old, random, completely non-integrated days.
Now? Now Blogger is Picasa for prose, and Picasa is Youtube for still images, and your Plus homepage is your central hub for all the discussion happening on those services. Obviously, Plus has problems, and lots of them. It's far too opinionated for something that's being used as a general-purpose comment-engine. Plus is a good Facebook, but it's a piss-poor Disqus, and Google is using it as Disqus.
But the overall strategy of consolidation? Long overdue.
Google is finally turning their holdings into a single impressive platform instead of a balkanized mess of isolated services.
I don't like the privacy implications, of course. But that's always been Google's business model ever since they launched GMail - they give you something awesome for free and in exchange they get to spy on you to provide targeted ads.
That said, all these attempts to strong arm people into using Google Plus are really getting old.
The amount of rage people express about being "forced" to use Google + is as perplexing to Google as it is to me. It's an identity service.
You don't need to have a gmail account to use Google's services anymore you just need a Google identity. That's what Google + is. I don't know how many times I can say it but so far it seems like a lot of times. People want to rage.
The ability to comment and talk about stuff is going to permeate all of Google's services. I don't really see how else they could do it.
Maybe if they didn't force you to use your real name then everyone wouldn't be having freak outs?
And more and more normal customers seem to be noticing, especially on Youtube. Here's one woman crying about about how the confusing G+ prompts lead her to lose all her uploaded videos. (Warning, strong language) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccxiwu4MaJs
- Start using the name "Google+" only for the feed / social network functionality. Because thats what people think it is.
- Make the social network an optional service.
- Separate the single-signon solution from Google+. Call it "Google Account" or something similar.
- Provide easy to use account identity functionality (instead of using "pages").
- Ask users if they want to keep the existing identity or use their master identity ONCE per service. Respect their decision.
- Allow users to switch to/from using separate identities from/to using the master identity.
This is what the old Google would've done. You know, the one that actually tried pretty hard to do the right thing (i.e. don't be evil). Not the one that is desperately trying to compete with Facebook.
As far as I know, no other browser (IE,Firefox,Safari) has a social network (and very few actually nudge you into logging in to some profile when using it) and so this has a lot to do with what browser is used.
The author would likely not get this behaviour on any other browser (I'm on Firefox, I use some of Google's services and my Google+ account is still disabled), which is another reason to believe this has a lot to do with what browser is used.
Plain text copy and paste works fine without.
At one point I inadvertently signed into Chrome with my Google apps account, which then stored a lot more personal data in the cloud than I'd ever intended. When I noticed this sometime later, I tried to disconnect my account from Chrome—which is apparently not possible for a Google apps account—so the only fix was to delete the Chrome account and to lose my browser history and saved passwords...which I did, right before opening Firefox.
There are plenty of things to complain about with how google in "unifying" their accounts, but Chrome sync isn't one of them. The only thing I'd want them to add is the ability to sync to your own sync server like Firefox (essentially no does it, but the option is important), but encrypting everything locally is equivalent enough for me.
Google should be ashamed for trying to pay for their millions of dollars of infrastructure?
"Google's 2013 third quarter profits were nearly $15 billion; that profit is the difference between how much our privacy is worth and the cost of the services we receive in exchange for it. " (Bruce Schneier => https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/11/surveillance_...)
This is a great question raised by Capitalism, and the extreme lengths the United States has taken it to.
How do you define how much profit is enough?
If you're suggesting Google can still make "enough", shouldn't McDonald's pay their workers a few bucks more and still make billions? Shouldn't banks lower fees and still make trillions?
In our current world, the only amount of profit that is enough is "more", and that will be attained at all costs (i.e. employees living below the poverty line, banks destroying the global economy and in Google's case, we lose our privacy)
Of course they would.
And McDonald's would still make plenty of money if they were forced to pay a decent wage, and banks would still make plenty of money if they were forced to be more responsible and lower fees.
But you don't see that happening, because the drive for more profit is all consuming, and it's the corporations that have the most influence in these laws.
How many kitchens do they think I have?
The idea is that you get targeted ads for things you are looking for. Not always the recommendation is perfect, that is bad for you, Google, Publishers and Advertisers. If you can fix that you might be into something big.
For example, if you go to Hack-a-day, all the ads are relevant for their user base, even though they're fixed and not automatically assigned by Google's All-Seeing-Eye.
- Search terms (AdWords)
- IP geolocation
- Demographics (age, gender, income: derived or otherwise acquired)
- Search/browsing history
The line between the last two blurs a bit, since surely Google will try to fill in your demographic blanks based on your search and browsing patterns. But regardless, the first two they can do completely anonymously, and anyone who wants can likely escape the last two with the right browser settings or privacy extensions. Personally it doesn't bother me that much, since the results relevance I "trade" my privacy for has value for me as well as advertisers.
As such the value of the young peoples' engagement puts FB on par with an email service.
They paid for that before without being annoying, Facebook pays for theirs by being less annoying than Google. (Wow, thinking about this just now who would've thought the day would come so soon that Facebook is less annoying than Google.)
So essentially signing you up for things without consent is OK? It's never OK, irrespective of motive.
G+ is just an extension of their offerings. Just because the tides of the internets have flowed against it doesn't mean that anything involving Google plus is practically rape.
And they didn't sign him up for anything, they upgraded his account. Still a single account, still with a single company, still with the same cost, still with the same privacy policy, still with the same everything - except it does more, now, if he so chooses to use the extra features.
[0] http://marketingland.com/google-hits-300-million-active-mont...
[1] https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AGOOG&fstype=ii&ei=...
I do wonder if this wouldn't break Google Now though.
And google+ is not helping.
They will soon realize by finding it hard to recruit talent. Google and Facebook used to be the best companies to work at, nowadays you're starting to get looked at strangely if you work there.
What, you've been part of the NSA thing? What, did you work on G+? LOL was it you who redesigned youtube comments?
2 new horsemen in tech pls.
Is there an alternative, where I would have 15GB and the option to use my own domain. I'll happily pay to avoid creating a g+ account and have decent space for my emails without managing the security.
I log with my Google Account and I can use all Google Services without logging in, that's great, why can't we have that on the Desktop?
Or do you sign any contract presented to you without hesitation?
Imagine if Github created the Wiki product with a separate login, and then wanted to integrated Wikis into the rest of Github, but then lots of Wiki haters got mad because they wanted the old Github and didn't want to sign-up for all that Wiki stuff.
The point is, if you sign up for Google, you get Drive, Docs, Spreadsheets, YouTube, and G+. They are different services that are all part of having a Google account.
The real thing you should be complaining about is that G+ notifications are annoying, and you just want to turn it off because you don't use G+.
That would be like if every time you logged into Amazon.com to watch an instant movie you got notifications from S3 saying your bill for the month is $0.00, or your workmate you gave access to your EC2 account just bought a new TV.
It's the notifications that are problem, not the integration.
The day they require G+ will be the day I transfer to Fastmail permanently.
Google has played the long waiting game and has given users some excellent services for free(which has benefitted Google too). Now that the services are mature, they have to make sure that these services are self sufficient.
But really, I wonder how many of those things are really to increase number of G+ users (I suspect quite a few), and how many are simple setting resets because of a bug/move to a new system with different setting encoding.
So, go ahead, change the ToS, Google. Things being what they are, I can still get thru the day without the pain of switching.
What your blank G+ profile will do is connect your YouTube video views, with your Google Map searches, Google searches, GMail, and whatever else you do. If you log in to G+ on a cell phone in NYC, they will know it. Then you take your cell phone back home to SF, they will know that G+ profile was logged in from NYC and SF.
You're sharing the fact that you're the same person doing all these activities across various services, various locations, various times, various devices, and with various people.
Also, I believe you do not have to be logged into Maps on your mobile phone to use it.
Lastly, what are we worried about here? The NSA can figure out how to do a join between all the different databases Google has to uniquely identify you and Google will not ask you for consent on that. What Google is trying to do is combine the info from various services to get better targeted ads. Is that exactly a tragedy or an invasion of privacy? At the end of the day, no matter how they collect it, store it, organize it, or analyze it, you end up voluntarily giving them all the information. Don't want to do that? Sign out of YouTube.
And if I remember correctly the new terms prompt does specifically mention G+ integration, and it has a 'dont accept' option.