
Dear Googles: Stop asking - davidgerard
https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/ayk2DF43eF1
======
alextingle
I was all enthusiastic about G+ for about 5 minutes - until they wouldn't
allow my wife to sign up without giving them her phone number, _and proving
that it was hers by accepting a call from them_. Just who the fuck do they
think they are??

There is no way I could suggest my friends and family sign up to such an
intrusive service, so I quickly deleted my own account.

It's an absolutely stunning achievement to create a web-site that's even more
offensively intrusive than Facebook. I hope Google are proud.

~~~
kordless
> Just who the fuck do they think they are??

They think they are Google - you know, the guys that made the Internet
searchable. I'm pretty sure they know what they are doing.

Call verification is used by many services to establish ownership of an
account, and to provide a fallback mechanism that automates the recovery of an
account. Google likes to automate the shit out of things. This is no
different.

I hear that you are angry about their policies, but I really don't hear _why_
you are angry other than it's 'intrusive'. Are you afraid they are going to do
something horrible with your phone number but not your searches? Do you have
similar concern and passion for what the NSA has done? Are they related to
each other?

~~~
sitharus
> Call verification is used by many services to establish ownership of an
> account, and to provide a fallback mechanism that automates the recovery of
> an account. Google likes to automate the shit out of things. This is no
> different.

I've been using the internet for well over a decade now. The number of
services I've signed up for must be in the hundreds.

I've never had to verify my identity unless a monetary transaction has been
carried out, and then it's to my bank rather than the merchant.

Nothing I get from Google+ needs any confirmation of my real identity.

~~~
kordless
> Nothing I get from Google+ needs any confirmation of my real identity.

Now we're getting to the nut of the real argument.

~~~
css771
I think the problem comes from the fact of treating Google+ like any other
social network like Facebook. Google+ is supposed to be an identity layer for
all of Google. The fact that they have status update posting, etc is
secondary.

Google would like to assign a face, name and phone number to every Google
account. And why is that? For various reasons. A face and a name is very
valuable for targeted ads. And a phone number associated with every Google
account will help Hangouts. Maybe it will enable sending SMS from the web to
any phone and also Voice users can cal from the web from their Google account.
Thus, Google achieves their aim of disrupting the carriers and making the
phone number irrelevant.

That's just the way I see it anyway.

~~~
sbuk
If that's the case, why not be up front about it?

~~~
zer0defex
Because saying you're the next OpenID won't allow you to be the next social
network sensation à la Facebook.

~~~
pestaa
Except that OpenID is a distributed protocol, which the Internet should so
obviously use for authentication, not FB/G+.

------
buro9
Does Google believe that if they just push a little harder and finish the job,
that somehow the people so alienated will be won over?

Or is the pursuit of profit far more important than the perception of the
brand overall?

Right now, and for the last year, the brand is being severely tarnished in all
of the networks I have, tech and real-life. I don't see them winning on any
front. A Pyrrhic victory.

~~~
MayanAstronaut
I have no idea why people talk about huge corporations like they have hive
mind and are in total unity?

Google is now a mega-corp, comprised of thousands competing for finite success
outcomes (raises & promos). It is also data driven hence they look at metrics
that are considered success like registers over abandonments. Brand tarnish is
a long term outcome, therefore it can not be seen in typical a/b testing
cycles. Hence it is ignored, or even gamed upon for short term metric gain.
This is true for all corps that equate success with short cycle data driven
metrics.

~~~
leoc
By all accounts the consolidation and Plusification of Google's services is
being driven from the top, by Larry Page specifically.

~~~
Silhouette
That a bad plan comes from a famous person doesn't make it any less of a bad
plan.

In the spirit of Google: +1 for people and +2 for companies now actively
moving away from almost all Google properties because they're becoming so
unpleasant and/or unproductive to use. I _know_ they're all about being data
driven and running empirical tests: that's why the {expletive deleted} page
moves around every time I come back and visit something, which is probably the
single most annoying thing they've been lately. The very fact that they're
running so many tests is materially reducing the value of their services to
us.

Ironically, our exodus started with abandoning our business G+ pages, because
they have generated so little interest that they aren't even worth a few
minutes now and then to update them any more. It appears that literally no-one
we care about is actually using Google+.

~~~
vdaniuk
Do you have any proof that significant number of people are moving away from
almost all Google properties? This sounds very anecdotal.

~~~
Silhouette
I'm merely offering an anecdotal view and make no claim otherwise, though FWIW
it's a pattern I've now seen with multiple clients who previously had varying
levels of Google dependence as well as my own companies and myself personally.

The thing that made me mention it was that so many of the reasons given by so
many of the people involved are fundamentally the same. If what I've seen is
at all representative, Google are increasingly perceived to be a
security/privacy risk (though this is hardly unique among cloud services) and
perhaps worse for them, they're not perceived to be a stable long-term bet
(too many dropped products, too many unwanted changes happening too fast,
nothing special in terms of quality or features, and little support for
users).

Some of these factors presumably won't be as damaging to Google in the
consumer market, or at least not as quickly, so I don't see their main
advertising business dying any time soon. However, to businesses with real
money on the line and organisation-wide IT strategies to plan, Google's
overall offering looks increasingly unattractive. For example, Google
Docs/Drive/Apps have been tried by various groups I know. None is still happy
with them, and several have been forced to move at least some of their
activities to alternative systems because the Google ones just weren't capable
of getting those jobs done. Chrome is another example I've more often heard
mentioned between curse words than flattering ones recently. And I already
mentioned in another post the horrible experience we had trying to organise
some Google Ads.

Google's resilience appears to stem in part from traditional alternatives
shooting themselves in the foot by also pushing to cloud-based offerings and
therefore immediately running into similar concerns. Even so, Google seem to
be getting worse faster than everyone else.

------
shittyanalogy
The whole phone number thing is an attempt to solve a very hard problem.

Most people have terrrrrrrrrrrible password practices. Absolutely abysmal. And
they are keeping extremely sensitive data inside their email as well as using
their email address as the key to accessing many other websites and pieces of
sensitive data. Think about how screwed you'd be if you lost access to you
email address. Now think of how many people DAILY probably loose such access.
Phone numbers are an easy, mostly reliable way to identify someone and give
them access back to their email address without an investigation and without
human intervention.

Plus, let's just get reasonable for one minute here. Google already has your
phone number. Ever given it to someone via gmail? Someone else ever given your
phone number to one of their friends through gmail? They're just asking for
permission to send you a text.

~~~
rjd
You totally miss the point. Its not about how great two factor authentication
is. Its about the fact I don't want to use the two factor authentication, I'd
rather loose everything.

I'd rather have my "sensitive" data compromised than have some multinational
advertising company that has been compromised by every major government on the
planet have access to me at any given time.

And its as annoying as having someone stand in your kitchen every morning and
say "A bowl of bran Sir, its good for you, best thing to eat Sir, other
options are inferior". I hate Bran, I'd rather eat toast, I'd eat fruit, I'd
rather wait till lunch time. But that butler person won't go away, he shows up
at lunch time, an dinner, and when I just feel like a quick snack down town.

I don't care how much better it is for me, I already know, I just don't want
it.

And lastly, if someone steals your phone, with your a mail client on it, it is
way easier for identity theft to occur, not harder.

~~~
yuhong
>I'd rather have my "sensitive" data compromised than have some multinational
marketing company that has been compromised by every major government on the
planet have access to me at any given time.

They are far from the same thing, and why do you think it is worse?

~~~
rjd
Because whats on my Google is mildly embarrassing, where as I grew up group of
kids from Yugoslavia, where the government forces used information like this
to butcher people in the streets, in there homes. I turn not he TV and see it
happening in Iraq, and Syria right now.

Its not a future I want this world to have, and we are unfortunately enabling
it, as always, with poorly thought through best intentions.

------
colinbartlett
Google has become this unwieldily beast that doesn't care how frustrated its
users become, because it knows not enough of them will leave to have even the
slightest dent in their revenue.

~~~
antonius
In the case of YouTube, I agree. What good alternatives are out there that
have even half the content that YouTube has?

~~~
_delirium
Vimeo is on par or ahead for artsy original content, but pretty much focuses
only on that niche, so there aren't many music videos for popular music, tv
show / movie clips, or any of the rest of the stuff you find on YouTube.

~~~
xtc
I would really like to see Vimeo become more popular. Their service is much
cleaner and far less annoying. Although the recent discovery of Youtube
Feather has me intrigued.

~~~
w4
They don't permit all sorts of content that YouTube does, which is what holds
Vimeo back from broad acceptance as a YouTube replacement.

~~~
iskander
...but their higher quality standards are also what has allowed them to carve
out a niche which youtube can never replace.

~~~
w4
Sure -- it's a double edged sword, but the point is that Vimeo does not
represent a potential YouTube replacement.

------
gojomo
Listen, and understand. That Google Plus is out there. It can't be bargained
with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear.
And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you complete your profile.

~~~
bowlofpetunias
Somehow I feel a bit uncomfortable laughing at this.

If Google ever becomes involved in defense work, with this attitude, we are
fucked. Imagine combination of armed drones, Google's self-driving car
technology and a vast amount of real time data on everyone everywhere.

Now where did I put that tinfoil hat?

------
vinhboy
I don't mind the annoyance of Google+ for my personal account. But they really
fucked things up when they forced the integration on my Google Apps for
Business (terrible name by way -- why not "Google Business Suite"). Now we
have clients pissed off because they can't share images in their organization
without opening Google+. This HAS to stop.

~~~
RexRollman
Google is an advertising company. All they really care about is building
profiles on users and using it to sell ads. That's why you have a ton of
unwanted integration, Chromebooks that can't create user accounts without
Google's permission, and a Chrome web browser that default to sending a ton of
info to Google.

I still use Google Search but I got rid of my Google account, got rid of the
Chromebook, moved my email to Fastmail, and moved to Firefox for browsing.

------
ancarda
The main issue is Google will only drive a small minority of it's
customers/'products being sold' away. If you have a problem with Google's
current approach, you may want to consider leaving, not to "stick it to the
man" but to not have to deal with their services anymore.

I recently deleted everything on my account (G+ & YT included) and it feels
great to be free from the constant harassment. I only have Gmail active now.
I'm still looking for a new mail provider but once I have one, my relationship
with Google is over as far as I'm concerned.

It really depends on how much you need to use Google's services.

~~~
fakeanon
For some people it is harder. I deleted my personal Google accounts a while
ago. Our school e-mail is Gmail. When we visit Youtube after logging in for
Gmail, you have an account, just not a channel. A little box telling you about
the updated comment section keeps popping up. There is not a great danger to
what they are currently doing, but it is annoying.

~~~
bowlofpetunias
Your school or company knowing exactly what you're doing on youtube is more
than just annoying. It can be extremely harmful.

~~~
yuhong
It depends on the school or company though of course.

------
c_hawkthorne
Wow, two years can have a huge impact:
[http://i.imgur.com/wbjCmbt.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/wbjCmbt.jpg)

------
pstuart
It blows my mind how badly Google sucks at "social networks."

------
dror
I gave google my phone number a long time ago when I set up two step
authentication. Your account is significantly more secure when you do that.
Has never been abused AFAIK.

I think of it as similar to giving identifying information to my credit card
company when I'm calling them. (Though citi pissed me off asking me for the
_full_ credit card number a few years ago).

------
alextingle
Relevant: [http://toys.usvsth3m.com/google-plus-
simulator/](http://toys.usvsth3m.com/google-plus-simulator/)

~~~
davidgerard
I posted that link to G+. One person claimed it must be a disgruntled
YouTuber, another seriously claimed b3ta must be Microsoft shills. I despair.

~~~
alt_f4
So, you are surprised about a negative reaction on the social network for
(former) Google employees?

~~~
eropple
He didn't say he was surprised. The general lack of basic self-introspection
makes me sad, too.

------
Tarang
Its really annoying since you know its a script and it can just keep asking
you again and again. Sometimes it asks me my cell number while trying to check
my email (even on my paid google apps account!)

Facebook has taken an interesting more sneaky turn recently with their
messenger app. Since now they can collect phone numbers without explicitly
asking for them.

Once it's given to them just once.. Its with them forever.

~~~
hexagonc
Yes, it's just a script, but you know that there was a human behind that
script. Someone at Google, probably pretty high up, made a _decision_ that
they're going to keep pestering you, and making your experience as shitty as
possible until you give them what they want.

------
joelrunyon
No means no. They really ought to figure that out by now.

~~~
n09n
No means not now. If they really didn't want to take no for an answer, they
could just merge the accounts without asking the user. Instead, they keep
reminding the user with gradually increasing frequency to make sure that the
user has all their shit in order before the merge actually happens.

~~~
PeterisP
Well that's the whole problem - the youtube name dialog options end with
"well, we'll ask you later" while the user wants an option "I said 'never' and
I mean it".

~~~
n09n
That option is there, it's the x button in the top right corner.

------
gesman
1\. Google asking me for cellphone number only because I've enabled 2-factor
authentication so it does it for every new browser/device.

2\. Regarding chats, I think it's in cookies, so when you change browsers -
the whole QA thing repeats.

3\. Google of course wants to know about you more than your mama and spouse
combined, but at least some of that pestering experience is due to the fact
that Google is prone to employing lousy programmers as much as any other corp.

4\. No one is forced to use Google's free services and be put up with begging
for personal information so that implies the freedom to switch to any other
provider away from Google.

------
lancewiggs
The decision makers, and most people who work at Google probably don't see
this problem. They just hand over the information and move on.

It's like the Delta Airlines management team who had a special bus to the
airport and a hole in the fence to go straight to their first class seats in
their airplanes, or senior Apple employees who (less so now) appeared to never
to actually travel outside California and London.

If you don't see a problem you will never fix it. Google and Facebook folks
are content with living inside their bubble, while the rest of us get more and
more frustrated and use their products less and less.

------
mason240
Also please stop asking me to share G+ with my contacts everytime I go to G+.

Nothing makes like a website less than annoying screens I have to click
through every time I go there.

------
hellbanTHIS
That personal info must be worth an unholy amount of money for them to blow
their once-stellar reputation like this.

------
charlus
I complied with everything they ask and they no longer bug me really. But
still Google+ is unusable, it constantly uses 40% of my processor just to have
that tab open in Chrome/Linux. Facebook runs lovely in comparison.

~~~
dredmorbius
The size of the DOM is one of many complaints I've had with the service. It
effectively made me choose between one of two browsers, and limits the number
of tabs I can open on the site (for resource exhaustion), though opening new
tabs to go to the proper context is the only way to accomplish many tasks.

In all, a long litany of frustrations.

------
lignuist
Dear Hacker: Stop signing up at Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter and all the
other personal data collection services, if you care about your privacy. I'm
living a happy life without such accounts, and so can you.

~~~
dredmorbius
As it turns out, the only one of those many services I have an account with
was Google, and the one I use most often is pseudonymous.

My clearly stated preference was to _not_ link my pseudonymous identities on
G+ and YouTube, as well as not to link either to real-world identifiers. I'd
actually posted on the custom URL issue (phone number required) a few weeks
back. _That_ identifier then turned out to show up as a reverse-lookup to your
G+ account. There are people who know me IRL and have my phone number. I'd
prefer they did _not_ identify it with my G+ identity.

------
AJ007
I am happy Google is pushing lots of annoying questions to remind everyone
there is no reason to be logged in to Google to view Youtube videos.

~~~
dredmorbius
There are some videos, generally flagged for violence, which cannot be viewed
unless you're identified to the service. A surprising number of breaking news
story coverage is unavailable on those grounds.

~~~
sesqu
Many of those age-restricted videos can still be embedded, and viewed through
the embed url without logging in.

------
josteink
I just went to plus.google.com and I had a huge popup asking me to subscribe a
bunch of things and enable a bunch of notifications.

Things I've explicitly turned off, because I dont want to be bugged all the
time.

The only way to move on was to edit the URL back to what it was before I got
redirected.

Google+ is all about coercion. There's really no mistaking about that.

------
keyme
Is there a browser plugin or something that can keep google in check? Like
separating youtube, gmail and the search into different "sandboxes"? Maybe
blocking some of the annoying popups that constantly demand your info? I'm not
familiar with such a thing, but it could be kinda nice to have it.

~~~
greenyoda
Even if you run YouTube, Gmail and search in different incognito windows so
that they don't share cookies, they could still figure out that all these
requests were coming from the same browser (via browser fingerprinting) at the
same IP address.

~~~
dredmorbius
I've been told by a Google engineer (on G+) that IP addresses aren't used for
identity purposes. Whether or not they're aggregated at other levels ... would
be interesting. I'm not sure whether or not browser fingerprinting is used at
all, though I've suggested some reasonably non-invasive ways in which it might
be applied for abuse and harassment mitigation, say: hashing fingerprints and
storing them with the complainant's account in order to detect sockpuppet
attacks.

You couldn't reverse the hash to determine the fingerprint, but if
fingerprints matched, you'd have identical hashes. Splitting out different
data records might help create probabalistic matches (e.g., n of m hashes
match for an identity probability of p).

Tor would of course address IP issues. Privoxy could handle browser
fingerprinting.

------
znowi
I wish they were as innovative in their marketing practice as in apps. They
seem to replicate whatever Facebook is doing to milk more users for more data.
And something Facebook doesn't have to do - frantically coerce people to join
Google+ on a massive scale.

I think it's a result of a lesson learned with Buzz. There was a lot of media
hype about it, but very little push to the masses (compared to Google+). And,
rightly so, it died off. Cause on its own merit, it kind of sucked and got no
traction, despite the formidable Google force behind it.

With Google+ - the last hope of the Empire in social media battle - everything
goes.

------
randac
This annoys the hell out of me because I know as well as they do that one day
I'll misclick one of these fucking things.

------
mtgx
You can only grow a user base that is engaged with your product _organically_
, not by forcing them.

~~~
davidgerard
Google Plus - as in, the actual plus.google.com website and app, the Facebook
competitor - has basically failed in this regard. The people on it _love_ it!
I've been on it since it started. But the people on Buzz loved that too,
before Google unceremoniously shot it through the head.

Basically, the existing user base doesn't matter. So they might as well go
straight to forcing people onto it, since they failed to lure them onto it.

------
crystaln
Humans are no longer responsible for such things at google. If you have
objections, submit them to the Algorithm, Who already knows what you have to
say and doesn't care.

------
Zenst
Sadly it is a trend, started with companies adding toolbars to software you
have to deselect, then they ask you again EVERY update (Adode looking at you
amongst others here). Then there is the constant mistargeted adverts, say for
a product you already own, analytics at its meh.

Personaly one that has been grinding my gears recently is avast on a pc which
constantly keeps popping up a link to read about FB privacy, I don't do
Facebook and with that my privacy is alrady covered. yet this pop's up many a
time, I use 3G internet upon that PC so suspect every time I get a new IP
(often) then the advertising popup for the self promoting article gets flagged
up again.

In an age of computers able to remember what we forget or wish to forget it is
somewhat annoying to be asked the same question over and over again in the
hope you will eventualy say yes too there satisfaction and voiding the upmteen
no responses you have said. Yet once you say yes you aint asked again if you
would like to say no instead, funny that.

But this is the case with software you can't download, hack about and compile
to taste. With that I support this mentality as it will only push people into
learning something new. That said if I ever have a problem with a company like
google can I ask them umpteen times the same question until I get the answer I
want? Only fair in implied contract law perhaps :).

With that the days of software acting like a small kid constantly asking for a
bike at for Christmas will be with us for a while longer until the yes and no
response have equal value too them. Until then, is it yes yet? is it yes yet?
is it yes yet?.....

------
jdrenterprises
I don't like the "persistence" of Google either, but... if you want to use
their package of services (Plus, GMail, others...) the stakes are just going
to get higher and higher.

Today, it's a cell phone number for the "benefit" security. Tomorrow, they
will ask for a SSN in order to use Gmail.

They offer free services for one reason, and one reason only... and it isn't
because they like giving away stuff.

Google is offering "X" service so they can bargain your data out of you, more
and more of your data. That, IMO, is the reality of the situation. I would
challenge that most people don't understand fully the bargain they are
getting.

Google knows most people don't understand this bargain.

Now, that said, do they offer value in the services they provide in exchange
for this data? Sure.

If you want that value, they will either:

1\. Get your data, and quit asking for it.

2\. Not get your data, but keep asking for it, as many times as they want,
because it's their sandbox.

And here's the kicker in my opinion, millions of people are going to keep
signing up for and using their free services, and keep offering their data in
exchange for using their services.

The Google world just keeps on turning...

------
ddorian43
Like youtube, they asked you to make you feel like you had a choice. (i may be
wrong)

------
davidjgraph
Isn't the real point here the relative quality difference between Google's
search and the rest of their products?

The search result looks pretty good...

~~~
xpda
Google search has become fuzzier over recent years. When I look for something
technical, I almost always have to go back and put quotes around the terms,
because Google prefers to display a different search for more common, related
terms.

This brings up the Google Interface. I used to be able to use + in front of a
term I wanted to be treated literally. Now I have to use quotes, which is 4
keystrokes (including shift) instead of 1 for plus.

Google also has removed my ability to block certain URLs from your search
results. Now I cannot avoid the re-linker web sites, and occasionally get
suckered into clicking one. That is really irritating.

In spite of this, Google still provides the best search I've seen. I recently
compared Google and Bing in an obscure search. Google had 45 hits, Bing 15.

------
jamiequint
Ah yes, the vocal minority...

------
switch007
Gretchen: That is so fetch.

Regina: Gretchen, stop trying to make 'fetch' happen. It's not going to happen

------
SonicSoul
I am really worried about being forced to log into google to use chrome these
days.. there is a "skip for now" button. I hate this we-know-whats-best-for
you approach..

------
mcphilip
Im thinking about writing a FireFox extension that substitutes the word Google
with Panopticon on all of their web properties as a reminder to use their
tools less frequently.

~~~
pestaa
I panopticoned multiple times, but never figured out the reference you made.
Care to elaborate?

~~~
mcphilip
I'm referring to the following definition on Panopticon:

>The Panopticon is a type of institutional building designed by English
philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century. The
concept of the design is to allow a watchman to observe (-opticon) all (pan-)
inmates of an institution without them being able to tell whether they are
being watched or not.

------
pearjuice
Dear Google,

Thank you for all the free services you have delivered over the years. Please
do not listen to all those complaining about stuff they get for free. As free
as they were to sign up, they also have a choice to opt-out at any moment.

They blindly agreed to the Terms of Service which warned them, yet now
complain as if they are entitled to anything.

 _Look at them and laugh_

------
fallinghawks
I am asked for a phone number most times that I actually log into mail (which
isn't all that often since I just sleep the computer). Youtube is a travesty,
though.

After the recent upgrade, it did ask twice to turn on Talk for SMS messaging.
I said no both times and it hasn't asked me since.

------
hackaflocka
My wish for Google is different. I want it to keep interfering how I like to
consume its services. I want them to keep needling me. And everyone else. This
is the surest path to a competitor with a better value proposition.

------
Paul_S
Dear user, stop using google.

~~~
davidgerard
A lot of the problem is reneging on previous privacy/data segregation
policies. That is an entirely legitimate complaint.

There's also the question of to what extent you can opt out in the modern
world. Got a mobile phone, pretty much essential to work or life these days?
Your life is now beholden to Google or Apple. So yeah, people damn well do
have a right to complain, and "just don't use it" is a fatuous thing to say.

Useful reading from a real-life example:
[https://plus.google.com/u/0/115668950429167517685/posts/JcPQ...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/115668950429167517685/posts/JcPQuXzXTgU)

~~~
eonil
Google or Apple?

Funny. Do you really think they're same? A company making money by SELLING
PRIVACY, and a company making money by SELLING HARDWARE?

A company exists to make money. And all what they do is decided to make money.
Which one would really have interest to take your privacy? Apple? That really
doesn't help them to make money. They even tried, but failed. They're really
suck at making money from privacy, and it degraded reputation of their
product.

If you really think Apple is selling your privacy, tell me what's the REASON.
How will they make money from it rather than losing their money.

Google? See what's happening now.

Why do some people always want to tie Google with Apple? Which makes money
from completely different sources. The money source defines how the company
behave. If you really know that fact, you really can't say that stupid tie up.

Your life is beholden by Google, not Apple. Someday maybe Apple does that -
which is very unlikely happen, but not now. And the day will come after whole
existing privacy sells - such as Google - are dead, so Apple dominate whole
the market.

------
dredmorbius
OP here.

First off: thanks for the visibility. I've been railing about this pretty much
since G+ started (originally with nymwars) and Google just seems to continue
not getting it. Mega thanks to David for getting this on the queue and
everyone who upvoted. For something which was just a throwaway post (as I
said: I was looking for one of my own earlier instances and stumbled across a
whole trove), this had legs.

The HN moral: sometimes your best work is the stuff that takes little effort,
thought it helps to hit the Zeitgeist wave just right.

I ... don't _dislike_ Google, though the company's made itself vastly harder
to like, and for me personally, its brand equity has been tremendously hurt by
my experience to its corporate goals and motives surrounding G+, pretty much
from the start. My history with the company goes back further -- I was using
its search during beta in 1998/1999, and the reason was simple: it made things
easier for me, and performed useful tasks, far better than anyone else at the
time.

For a long time I saw Google bashing as almost entirely a Microsoft
phenomenon, but I've got to say that's no longer the case. I'm absolutely no
friend of Redmond's, and have watched events there over the past few months
with no small amount of schadenfreude. There's no question that Microsoft
continues to bash Google (sometimes effectively, often pretty cluelessly).
It's very clear to me that there's a pretty solid and consistent backlash not
just from techies, but as the G+ search I ran made clear, from ordinary people
sick of intrusive questions.

I could wax on about privacy, and people who could be endangered or put in
harm's way or find their lives ruined or what if Stalinist Nazi Cthulu buys
Google... and all of that's entirely valid, but it's besides the point. Even
if none of that applies, and you prefer _not_ to have your personal data
aggregated, if you say "no", the meaning is simple: "no". Stop asking. Don't
go ahead and do it anyway. Don't put buttons where they're likely to get hit
accidentally, or confusing dialogs, or interstitials, or anything else.

Because it's about respect.

But even if none of the factors above apply, the simple fact that I've and
many, many others have made amply clear that no, we don't wish to provide this
information, no, we don't wish to link our various associated identities, and
no, we don't want to be part of your "identity network", means that Google
(and, to be fair, a great many other companies and entities) are going OUT OF
THEIR WAY TO EXPLICITLY DISRESPECT THAT PREFERENCE.

And that Google, very, very clearly, no longer respects me, or any of its
users, based on far too many of its actions. Where Google used to make a
decent coin offering incidental ads on top of a useful services, it's ... lost
its way.

The data aggregation is one part of it. "No" means "No". It's a really simple
message.

Somewhat ironically, I'd recently kicked off a G+ Community (private and
invite only, sorry, I've actually transferred ownership to others as well) to
discuss an anti-harassment policy following a long and detailed discussion:

[https://plus.google.com/108316670838828910396/posts/9gMF3qyq...](https://plus.google.com/108316670838828910396/posts/9gMF3qyqpbK)

Google's own inability to play by similar rules is ... interesting.

I'd also been reviewing some older posts, mine and other people's, as well as
many of the YouTube top contributor responses (Reggie, Jonathan Paula, and
others). Three points that kept getting made again and again were:

1\. Google's interfaces make tons of work for users. It's sort of the anti-
Perl: they make easy things hard (and tedious), and hard things impossible.
Responding to YouTube comments, muting or blocking users, flagging spam,
setting volume controls, managing Circles, checking on blocked / muted users,
and on and on. In particular the fact that _to take care of a problem here and
now_ you've got to _go somewhere else within the site to deal with it._ The
lack of concurrent controls is ... maddening.

2\. There was no direct control over things. Google apparently are trying to
handle everything "behind the scenes" through machine intelligence. And far
too often doing an absolutely miserable job of it, especially where some very
basic controls (dismiss post, time-out a user, comment moderation tools for
posts) would help tremendously. I've seen some suggestions that earlier
iterations (Wave or Buzz) are considered to have failed in part because their
interfaces were too complex, but if anything G+ suffers from too _few_
controls. And one sign of an oversimplified interface is that people start
devising conventions to get around limitations. This happens on G+ in spades.

3\. Noise controls. People's streams are absolutely out of control. I'd noted
starting in March or thereabouts that I was finding Notifications and Search
far more useful than my Stream. In a discussion of the +1 automatic share
issue, Lauren Weinstein's guests similarly noted that they were using their
Streams less and less:

[https://plus.google.com/events/c0sddcekptbf047pb3if23rfvjc](https://plus.google.com/events/c0sddcekptbf047pb3if23rfvjc)

In particular, Robert Scoble (the old noisemaker hisself) has ranted
repeatedly and epicly on the lack of proper noise controls on G+, from pretty
much day 1. This is from about a year in, but few of the points have been
addressed:

[https://plus.google.com/111091089527727420853/posts/9mA8XCdu...](https://plus.google.com/111091089527727420853/posts/9mA8XCdu3qA)

When I go to a site such as Hacker News or Reddit, I typically _look at the
front page first_ to see what's been selected. Because, well, it's been
selected. G+ Streams and Communities don't do that. I turn to them, if at all,
_after_ going through Notifications or explicitly searching for things. I
recently suggested G+ fix "What's Hot" by simply renaming it "What's Rot".

Who really nailed it for me though was Homer Slated's comment on this issue at
G+ (NB: it's a touch piquant):

[https://plus.google.com/102946757503830834230/posts/Mim3MwZT...](https://plus.google.com/102946757503830834230/posts/Mim3MwZTrXc)

In a comment he writes, that when receiving a Notification from Google:

 _[W]hat Google is doing is, essentially, telling me that it 's found a word
in the dictionary that I might be interested in, that it's seven letters long
and contains the letter "g", but rather than just telling me what the word is,
or even linking directly to it, it simply links me to a dictionary, then
expects me to spend hours trawling through that dictionary just to finds that
word...._

 _It helps to understand that Google is not a search company, or a social
networking outfit, or an email provider ... it 's an advertising company, and
therefore everything it does is oriented toward the principle of
"promotion"...._

 _While I have no doubt that Google has highly sophisticated search algorithms
working behind the scenes, the results that you and I are actually presented
with, and the mechanisms for obtaining those results, are skewed toward
"buzz", not accuracy or relevance._

 _In other words, if Google were a news organisation, it wouldn 't be
reporting the news, it would be fabricating it, then tailoring that work of
fiction to appeal to (what it believes is) your "general" interests._

 _If there was a single word that could concisely sum up Google, it would be
"vague". Google is deliberately vague, it's notifications are vague, the way
it handles articles and comments is vague, its search results are vague ...
and by no accident. Google is deliberately vague because it wants to steer you
away from what's actually relevant to you, and what actually interests you, to
those things it wants you to become interested in._

In a G+ post I discussed lies. The common one is the lie of commission: I tell
you something that's not true, a fabrication. Another, slightly more nuanced,
is the lie of _omission_ \-- neglecting to inform you of a material fact.
You'll find it especially referenced in business contracts, particularly real-
estate and M&A concerning adverse conditions. A third type is what I've called
a "lie of diversion". It's generally not a truth or a non-truth itself, but
its purpose is to _obscure_ truth, meaning, and relevance. It's at the heart
of much of what's wrong (IMO) with "viral media" and messages -- little non-
facts floating around in little non-informational nuggets, clogging up your
cognitive circuits. And processing all that non-information _takes a lot of
effort_.

[https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/5zrCkbzR...](https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/5zrCkbzRqrB)

The biggest problem with G+ I was consistently running into was simply the
non-relevance of what it was presenting me. And that's a change fundamentally
due, I suspect, to its reliance on advertising and the culture this brings.

Google thought it could ride the advertising tiger when it opted to go that
way early in its career. And for a time it did. But in a long and storied
career of riding tigers, I've learned two things: ultimately the tiger is in
control, and dismounting is the hardest part.

The lack of respect is why I feel that Google's corporate culture is
fundamentally broken. Whether it's a rotten core or a rotten head I don't
know. I absolutely don't question that there are some very well-meaning people
working for Google, especially within the engineering staff. Possibly high on
the org chart. But enough people, in enough positions of power, and I strongly
suspect Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, and Vic Gundotra as being part of that
group, either don't get it, are actively pursuing personal data aggregation,
or, and this actually frightens me more: have been persuaded that it's in
their best interest to follow this path via a deal they cannot refuse.

Frankly, none of those possibilities does much to give me any level of faith
in the company. Or in any centrally-organized personal data-gathering effort.

------
Aldo_MX
If you register a new account, verifying by mobile is mandatory now :(

~~~
davidgerard
Really? I just created a new G+ name and it only wanted a captcha. (It also
created a GMail for me, though I didn't ask for one.) That was from my home
IP, which has one other GMail user; I'll experiment from other places.

------
moca
The answer is pretty simple: the Google+ deciders don't get social. They think
very differently from their users and they refused to listen for past 2-3
years.

------
altrego99
To upload all the pictures I click automatically to Google's server. What's up
with that? Stop, asking.

------
conradev
Facebook does the exact same thing. They want your interests so that they can
show you ads.

~~~
eonil
We're not taking about Facebook.

And Facebook does same thing doesn't justify anything. It just means they're
same. Also Facebook has a lot better configurable personal policy.

Anyway, that's awesome finally we have two options. If we can make them
compete, we will get the service in cheaper price - with less personal
information. Currently Facebook looks obvious winner in this field, because
users don't even realize they're offering stuffs to Facebook, and Google has
big resist.

------
pjmlp
Next step, forcing Android users to have G+ accounts.

------
dlsx
This.

And stop asking if I want to download the youtube app every time I go to
youtube.com in mobile safari (It is the pop-up banner of this generation.)
That goes for all you clever scripting savvy marketers, I fucking despise you.

------
kansas
True. It is beyond sickening. Recently it forced me to upgrade to Google +
when i try to login to gmail. Upgrade?

That was the only choice in the whole page. I have to close the browser
session and come back again. I really dont know what to do. Got sucked in.
there is no way around. Soon i will get the courage to move out.

~~~
zaqokm
> Got sucked in. there is no way around.

I know the following will not win me too many friends, but there is a way to
around this, and that is to stop using their products. They are a commercial
entity and making money for the company and shareholders is one of their
"prime objectives". Due to that, unfortunately they have to push into areas
which generate revenue for them.

The services are not free, you pay for them with your compliance and personal
information.

------
rwhitman
So you get the worlds best and most powerful email inbox - for free - and the
small price you pay is to be continually asked for PII and very subtle upsells
on using additional, also free, services.

I don't know but that sounds pretty fair to me.

