

Google’s Deal for Polar Shows It Has Not Given Up on Google+ - t23
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/09/11/googles-deal-for-polar-shows-it-has-not-given-up-on-google/

======
27182818284
I have the feeling Google+ is widely used, just not publicly. My family uses
it daily, but it is a private circle so you'd never see the traffic.

Additionally Google tends to head-shot products that aren't working (Wave,
etc) so I'm inclined to believe they have private metrics that are promising.

~~~
jaaron
My extended family does a weekly Google+ Hangout and we regularly share photos
on G+. Again, it's all private, but it works great.

------
dennisnedry
The problem with Google+ isn't that it has a bad mobile experience, it's that
it offers no reason for people to leave Facebook. I don't see how hiring the
founder of Polar will have any effect on that fundamental problem.

~~~
imgabe
Facebook provides plenty of reason to leave Facebook. The only problem is
getting a critical mass of people somewhere else. Everyone's still on Facebook
because all their friends are on Facebook.

~~~
Karunamon
Not to the average person, it doesn't. HN's hatred of facebook is a well
documented thing, but to the average user, it's the place where you go to look
at pictures and talk with friends and so on.

~~~
adrianlmm
>> HN's hatred of facebook is a well documented

Where and why?

The last thing I knew is that the Facebok hatred came from Google supporters
who hate Facebook because it is Google's nemesis.

~~~
Karunamon
Find any thread on HN that deals with Facebook primarily. The comments will
run along the lines of (evil/intelligence gathering front/destroying
communication) and all manner of other emotionally loaded and/or objectively
incorrect nonsense.

There's not liking or not using a service, and then there's pathological
hatred.

I have never read a single positive thought on Facebook on this entire site in
my entire time here.

~~~
adrianlmm
>> Find any thread on HN that deals with Facebook primarily. The comments will
run along the lines of (evil/intelligence gathering front/destroying
communication) and all manner of other emotionally loaded and/or objectively
incorrect nonsense.

I know them, they all express hatred for Facebook, but curiously, they never
explain why.

>> There's not liking or not using a service, and then there's pathological
hatred.

There is, but the reason is unknow to me.

>> I have never read a single positive thought on Facebook on this entire site
in my entire time here.

Neather I, but again, the reason of so much hatred remains a mistery.

My theory is that those people hate Facebook because it is something that
Google can't be, no matter how hard it tries, and they think Google should
have that spot.

But why?

Are they getting pay to do it, it is because they are die hard fan boys?, or
maybe both.

~~~
magicalist
You're both off in the weeds.

There are many many posts on HN talking about why someone got rid of their
facebook account, or begging for an alternative, or throwing them under the
PRISM bus.

However, many of them give explicit reasoning (sometimes in great detail), so
not part of some pro-google astroturfing campaign, and there are many posts
extolling the virtues of facebook, if only for practical reasons, so if you've
"never read a single positive thought", you're suffering from severe selection
or confirmation bias.

~~~
adrianlmm
>> However, many of them give explicit reasoning (sometimes in great detail),
so not part of some pro-google astroturfing campaign

I've never seen one.

The reasons I've read are mostly emotional, other reasons because of technical
issues that can be mitigated just changing the configurations, other reasons
because they don't like Mark Zuckerberg.

Other reasons of why they don't like it are applied to G+ also, yet they use
G+ w/o complains.

Now, if you can provide examples of valid reasons, then I'm all ears.

~~~
magicalist
ah, so by "they never explain why" you mean they gave reasons that you didn't
deem "valid".

As I said, off in the weeds.

In any case, here's lots of counter examples for you:
[https://hn.algolia.com/#!/comment/forever/0/deleted%20facebo...](https://hn.algolia.com/#!/comment/forever/0/deleted%20facebook%20account)
(sorry, lots of emotional reasons in there too...it's hard to filter out a
_completely valid reason for stopping the use of something_ )

~~~
adrianlmm
The only "valid" reason I saw in that list, it is because "Facebook is using
my data" something that is stipulated in the license, so, in the end is not a
valid reason. And how is G+ or Google in general better than this? Is not. And
the same people hating Facebook for security reasons and yet use Google or an
Android phone are not congruent with their ideas.

In other words, those people hate Facebook and they don't even know why.

~~~
magicalist
Well there are certainly more reasons than that, so I'm not sure you even went
through the first page, let alone the 28 other pages of results. Moreover,
it's ok to "express hatred for facebook" and have that thing be something
intrinsic to social networks. And considering the 718 posts just with that
search, I don't believe you even went through the first page.

Second, only 5 of the first 25 posts there even mention Google and most of
those are also objecting to the same practices fro Google that they're
objecting to from Facebook, so, as I said, you may be suffering from more than
a little confirmation bias here.

~~~
adrianlmm
The search query is "I deleted facebook", the results stop being relevant
after the first page, the rest is just noice, the problem is that you have
failed to point to me to valid examples of motives to hate Facebook, weird,
since you afirmed there were several well documented, yet, you have showed the
quantity of zero.

So, you can't show me an example, I assume you are bluffing and neather you or
anyone here has a valid reason to hate Facebook, at least not a reazoned one,
just emotional.

------
pavlov
Huh. For a moment, I thought Google is acquiring Polar:
[http://www.polar.com/en](http://www.polar.com/en)

...Which would make some kind of sense in the light of the wearable hype, but
certainly wouldn't do anything for Google+.

~~~
gorner
I figured it might have been the Toronto-based Polar (né Polar Mobile, now
focused on Web native ad platforms): [http://polar.me/](http://polar.me/)

Too many Polars out there right now.

~~~
acheron
Could've been Polar soda. [http://www.polarbev.com/](http://www.polarbev.com/)

------
nnain
Maybe this team can make G+ a bit more engaging. They executed a rather simple
idea of collecting 'Yes/No' polls very well and were able to conduct polls for
big companies (MTV, TCrunch, Forbes and many more). Seems like a good team to
acquire.

------
t23
I love Google Drive and Gmail, but hardly ever use Google+. An improved G+
user experience would be great...

