
Google+ broke our trust - andor
http://www.zdnet.com/thanks-for-nothing-jerkface-7000030306/
======
IgorPartola
I don't get it. So Brin announces to the world that Google+ is the new sliced
bread in 2011. Then he tells a small group of people that he thinks he
personally should not have been involved with G+. Also the leader of the G+
project leaves (one month after the project started? One month after Brin had
his candid talk recently?)

Where in this is the broken trust? What is the author actually upset about?
Seems to me like in 2011 Brin and co. thought Google+ was the future. Now Brin
simply is admitting that he personally might not have been the right person to
take this on and perhaps it was a bad idea (not clear from the poorly written
article). On top of that the author is trying to make a story out of the
project leader leaving precisely because there was no story there.

I think this piece is terribly written and there is no story behind it. G+ is
not my favorite product but I think this is just an outburst of anger that
does not deserve our attention.

~~~
bane
The problem was the G+ was pitched as a social network. It grew, like a
cancer, into some weird meta-project that defies description, and along the
way fucked over lots of people who worked very hard to maintain different
identities and roles in the various on-line milieus they frequented. Sometimes
it was as simple as revealing their real name to their model plane group.
Other times it involved just shutting down real income generating youtube
channels that people had poured lots of time and effort into (thousands of
hours), or revealing to abusive ex-spouses where you lived...all without any
real good reason and zero upside to the users of the various Google properties
and dubious upside to Google as a business.

This was very costly for Google just on the employment front as well. Word on
the street is that Google had upwards of 1,200 employees working on the G+
project. Fully burdened, that's something like $250-300m/year.

There was no upside for the entire project, for users or for google. So now, a
couple $billion later, they finally realized what everybody else on the planet
realized 2 years ago. They could have just surveyed users back then to find
out where they were screwing up, but in typical Google fashion, that would
have involved actually engaging with their users, which Google is borderline
allergic to.

~~~
tedks
>The problem was the G+ was pitched as a social network. It grew, like a
cancer, into some weird meta-project that defies description

Really?

It was a single sign-on system to Google properties, tied to a social
networking thing. accounts.google.com came not far after plus.google.com.

Google wanted to avoid becoming MySpace and wanted to mimic Facebook, and
miscalculated slightly.

Personally, I really like being able to sign in once to Google properties. I
like that YouTube comments now have real names on them. It makes them much
less toxic.

How is it that Google+ shut down youtube channels? Changing the display name
is all I've seen it do.

~~~
MicroBerto
I agree on the real names. It truly cleaned up the nonsense and brings more
peace of mind to those who scyually make YouTube money - the popular channel
operators.

We get way less idiocy now.

~~~
sesqu
See, I don't see that as a user. The bad comments sections used to be full of
bad puns and arguments, but now they're just smaller and full of contentless
"watch this" mentions. On channels where the comments used to be good, they
are now rare and inaccurate.

~~~
MicroBerto
The "watch this" mentions are something different - that's Google's way of
trying to make things go viral (or something like that) on their social feeds,
and I believe is completely unnecessary.

~~~
sesqu
I believe they're just comments pulled in from google+ threads that mention
the video in question, based on the logic that all comments on the video
should be grouped. The problem is that people don't actually comment on videos
on google+, they just share content.

------
higherpurpose
I wish both Google and Microsoft would understand that you can't force change
down users' throats. It needs to come naturally. They need to _want_ it, and
have it grow _organically_.

Sure, forcing them will definitely bring you bigger "adoption" (for lack of a
better word) faster, but it will also build up a _lot_ of resentment,
potentially negating any advantage you might have from ramming the change
through, in the long run.

A lot of people didn't understand Twitter in the first 3+ years, but it still
managed to grow organically, because people _wanted_ to join it over the
years. Google tried to push Google+ to its 1 billion users within 2 years,
with seemingly very little advantage for the _users_. What did they expect?

Same for Microsoft when it comes to pushing Metro to PC users who have been
perfectly happy with their _PC interface_ , but Microsoft wanted to force them
to use a _tablet_ interface on a PC. Why? Because Microsoft said so, and
because they would get to flash "bigger numbers" to developers for "Metro
users". The actual experience of the user on a desktop was barely a distant
concern.

If you're a big corporation, and you can't grow a new business organically,
then _tough luck_. Maybe you shouldn't be in that market then.

~~~
brudgers
_I wish both Google and Microsoft would understand that you can 't force
change down users' throat_

Innovation is a funny thing, and interestingly, forcing change on end users is
something for which Apple regularly receives praise. Or as Henry Ford pointed
out, people wanted faster horses. Few people probably wanted rush hour
gridlock either.

Denonymization of the internet had already happened long before G÷. Cookies
and tracking data were collected for more than a decade before its rollout. G÷
just made it explicit, and Apple was already ahead via iOS and the app store
and the SIM cards in all those phones. Microsoft was barely a step behind
them, and for me? Well I think the Metro interface has huge advantage over
WIMP. It's cloud identity integration that drove me from Windows 8.
Installation was the Oh-Shit moment.

~~~
silverbax88
Except people are ignoring the significant market growth slowdown that Apple
has lost since Job's departure. A lot of old school Apple-friendly press
always cheer each Apple release, but the reality is Apple hasn't really been
"Apple" for some time. You have to remember that all of the news Apple
released last week doesn't matter to the average user/consumer. The biggest
news from Apple over the last 3 years to the average consumer was that they
bought Beats headphones.

------
bane
> Google+ embodied the Internet's cardinal sin: It broke everything it touched

I think this is the most important single line of the piece. G+ was pretty
broken from the get go despite some promising ideas. But instead of focusing
around what was working, Google simply amplified all the broken garbage --
then spread it around everywhere, making everything toxic, cancerous.

It's one of those many weird cases where you sit there, hands on your desk,
mouth agape looking at some Google property that was fucked over by the G+
project and just ask yourself "doesn't _anybody_ at Google use this garbage?".
Because the issues are so immediate and so obvious, it's impossible that
nobody raised some red flags.

Which leaves two possibilities:

\- Google is composed of such inept socially awkward people that no red flags
were raised and they all just proceeded on course _doo dee doo doo dee_ (a
scenario I find very hard to believe)

\- Red flags were raised and simply brushed aside.

The first scenario is hard to believe because it presumes mass and gross
incompetence on behalf of most of the employees at Google. But I know
googlers, I've been interviews by Google, I've had various interactions with
people from Google, and most of them just seem like normal folks from a
variety of backgrounds.

As more and more leaks out it sounds like the second scenario is where it's
at, and the question is why? Was it just some dumb headed attempt to extract
any money possible for the major shareholders by turning the brand into
garbage? Or was it just an honest attempt at unifying the properties, just
managed at an absolutely amateurish level?

It's all so senseless and stupid and now everything is broken.

The sad thing is, this is something I see all the time, one hopelessly broken
pet project is carried by the good idea fairy to some senior manager, and they
being a cascade of failures across the rest of the company on something they
probably have convinced themselves is just a big gamble with lots of upside.
By the time the damage is done and widely recognized, the exec is out the door
on their golden parachute leaving the remaining veterans to pick up the pieces
and unfuck things. Except in this case, the ultimate party responsible holds
half of the majority voting rights and continues to blissfully push socially
inept product ideas. The only remediation is a long unfucking process and some
possible minor impact on share price, meaning he can only buy 2 300' yachts
instead of 2 350' yachts.

~~~
Silhouette
I think there was a more thought-provoking part than the "broke everything it
touched" line:

 _Google 's executive chairman Eric Schmidt told National Public Radio digital
editor Andy Carvin in 2011 that if people don't want to use their real names,
then they shouldn't use Google+. He explained that Google should be considered
"an identity service" with Google+ as the foundation across all its products._

Google, particularly its senior executives, have been utterly unrepentant as
they've systematically trashed their once hallowed "do no evil" philosophy.
The thing I find disappointing is that more people didn't take Schmidt's
advice and stop using Google's services.

There are plenty of alternative search engines, e-mail services, video hosting
sites, mobile operating systems and browsers. Outside these five, Google have
relatively few big success stories anyway. Their track record in recent years
has mostly been one failure after another, even sometimes damaging their
established brands like YouTube and Google Maps.

And yet despite all the complaining, a lot of users seem to stick by them. I
can understand that behaviour with Facebook (and Google+ itself) because of
the inherent network effect, but the longevity of Google's brand loyalty is
remarkable.

~~~
mreiland
If I could find a good alternative to gmail, I'd take it in a second. Over the
years, I've really started to dislike gmail, and most of google's services.

~~~
cerberusss
Did you mean a good _free_ alternative? Or just a good alternative?

~~~
mreiland
Just a good alternative, I'm willing to pay, I just get scared sometimes that
I'm going to lose out on quality by moving away from gmail.

But the more time goes on, the more I hate the interface changes to gmail, and
IMAP to my local client is something that can happen with just about any
service.

------
clsec
I jumped on board early when I received an invite. I despised FB and was
looking for for something that might actually resemble the tribe.net model of
freedom and anonymity.

Unfortunately, I was told that I had to use my real name and signed up
accordingly.

Everything was going along fine for about the first 9 months until I got into
a small flame war with a woman in Canada about Scientologists (I used to work
for some). That turned out to be the end of G+ for me.

It seems that the woman reported me for using a pseudonym, which to me and a
few of my friends I obviously wasn't. I was livid! I immediately protested
loud and clear in my timeline. One of my "hooped" IRL friends works at Yahoo!
and told me that he had good connections at Google and could probably fix it
for me. And that if he couldn't do that that he could at least vouch for me.

As he was trying to work his magic the pressure from Google was getting
stronger. I had a big notice across my profile telling me that if I didn't
provide legal proof of who I was that my account would be suspended in a week.
I received the same threats in my gmail. So I started trying to work with them
on this matter only to find that I was dealing with bots. I was beyond
frustrated!

A few days later my friend came back to me and told me that there didn't seem
to be much that he could do. I sure as hell didn't want to send them my my ID
or birth certificate! So I caved in, scanned a court document with my full
name on it and a judge's signature, and gmail'd it it.

I should mention that by this point Google had decided to lock my profile and
place a huge notice across it demanding documents.

It took almost a full 2 weeks for them to get back to me and say that my
document was legit. Well, duh!!

With my new found "legal" status I continued to use G+ for about another year
or so. But as time marched on I became more and more disillusioned with Google
and their products and interacted less and less with G+.

Then June 5th 2013 happened and I was introduced to the world of Edward
Snowden. I immediately went and deleted _everything_ from my profile and
timeline (no small chore!). I then put a notice on my "about" page stating
that due to privacy issues with Google and the NSA that this account is no
longer active.

I now only use my gmail account, have been a happy DDG and IXquick user since
before this all went down, and haven't been back to G+ since.

~~~
pron
I can understand not wanting the NSA to snoop your correspondence. I can't
understand letting Google do that for years, analyze it, profile you and sell
that information to just about anyone, but then thinking that the NSA is the
final straw.

~~~
tomp
Google can't put you to jail. NSA (and the government) can.

~~~
DanBC
Google leaking your real / alternate identity can get you killed or fired or
beaten or arrested, and that's just for being transgender or homosexual.

------
Htsthbjig
What made Google special in the past was having principles and walking the
talk.

Those days when Altavista wanted to force people into watching noisy pop up
advertisements with annoying colors before you could search anything, and this
small company decided to just display text.

The days when everybody was onto portals to make the web enclosed inside
gatekeepers hand and Google brought freedom.

Those days are over. Just the other day I had them trying to change my name in
gmail and complete the information I gave them when gmail was invite only like
my birthday or a picture of me.

When I refused I had them INSULTING ME!! Something alike "it seems you are so
alone". Wow, if you don't use their "social private web", or any other social
site you are alone, even if you have a blog with thousands of people visiting,
and real friends you can talk, kiss or hug.

I am looking for Google alternatives right now.

~~~
pessimizer
As I say until people get sick of hearing it, google had:

1) principles and respect for its users, 2) great mathematical chops, and 3)
clean UI.

1) is gone, and everybody has 2) and 3) now. Other than a moral center Google
has never offered me anything that I couldn't get somewhere else. At least
_then,_ before alternate providers were driven out of business.

Right now, I have DDG as my moral search engine. Hopefully, one day, there
will be a place for moral email or social.

------
diminish
As an intensive user, everywhere on Google products, I feel the
Microsoftization. This includes documentation with corporate jargon, the
bloated and confusing Hangout fiasco, the frustrating way to connect multiple
identities together.

Did they hire any corporate UX/UI/branding/marketing/documentation guys from
Redmond recently, after Larry Page's CEOship?

~~~
cliveowen
It's an inescapable reality: companies grow and grow bloated and complacent.
It happened to IBM and Microsoft, it happened to Google and it's happening now
for Facebook. Once corporate mentality sets in the company's soul is gone.

~~~
wpietri
My theory is that it involves excessively mediated reality. When Google was
two guys, most of the people they talked to were not Google people. Now, my
guess is that 95% of their conversations are with people they pay. Those
people are more likely to tell them good things than bad things. And those
people also think Google is pretty swell, because these who don't leave
Google. And at Larry and Sergey's level, they probably aren't within three
layers of external reality.

There's a diagnostic term: Acquired Situational Narcissism[1]. Basically, when
a celebrity spends all their time around people who act like the celebrity is
the most important person in the world, then they too start to believe it. I
think there's a corporate version of that.

Imagine it: You created Google. You can buy anything. Everybody you spend time
around defers to you. Of course you'd think you could do a better job of
designing a social network than Facebook; half of humanity thinks that. The
problem is that people will now let you do that.

Once you've done it, your very mediated reality makes it hard to know you've
screwed up. Because everybody you talk to needs you to like them. Most of
those people have gotten promoted a number of times, meaning they are very
good at being liked by their bosses. And who doesn't like good news,
especially about a pet project?

I'm not sure it's inescapable, but it certainly is the very common outcome.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism#Acquired_situational...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism#Acquired_situational_narcissism)

------
Pxtl
My problem with Google+ isn't the unification of Google's social platform.
That makes absolute sense. The problem with Google+ is that it's _way_ too
opinionated.

It's a platform, not a product. A platform has to bend to the needs of its
users, and those "users" aren't necessarily the people posting the comments -
it's also the people hosting the comments on their YouTube pages and whatnot.

I appreciate wanting Plus to be backed by a "real" ID, but pseudonym support
that fully anonymizes the user (and controls over whether pseudonymous users
are allowed to post to your pages) should have been a day 1 feature, for
example.

------
spodek
A suggestion for Google to save itself regarding G+:

Donate some of its engineers' time to fix and revitalize Diaspora --
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_%28social_network%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_%28social_network%29)
\-- or one of its peers or something along its original vision.

It could achieve its goal of disrupting Facebook, give users their privacy
back, and by releasing the source code, could role back its role in
maintaining the code or policing the community.

It could declare victory and move on, leaving its users more satisfied than
they are now.

~~~
asdfologist
I agree that would be cool, but I don't think Diaspora offers anything
compelling to the general public. What fraction of FB users actually care that
much about privacy?

~~~
pessimizer
In my experience, amongst non-technical people, around 95%. Amongst techies? A
strong 20%.

~~~
Diamons
If that was accurate 95% of people would have stopped using Facebook when the
NSA's wiretapping was uncovered. Last I checked Facebook hasn't missed a beat

~~~
pessimizer
They need facebook because they like their friends. Its immensely important to
me that the government stop tapping my phone, but if you think the fact that I
still call my grandmother is a sign of consent, you're a fool.

------
sbarre
Is it even possible to reverse course on the G+ integrations now?

Would Google even want to, even if everyone agreed it was a bad idea in the
first place?

~~~
6cxs2hd6
That's an interesting question.

I can imagine this push resulted in some positive refactoring of Google's
internal systems, which they would like to retain.

However I can also imagine it resulted in some layers of duct tape (very much
like the rush job after a merger or acquisition), which they'd love to rip
off.

It would be interesting to hear a Google insider talk about this. Meanwhile,
my _guess_ would be it's a mix of the above, and they'll be stuck with that
mix for years to come.

~~~
toyg
Considering that the real-name policy is just that, a policy (albeit an
automatically-enforced one), I don't see what technical problems would arise
from its unilateral revocation. Just disable the flagging and be on your merry
way.

The thing is, I suspect Google leadership still don't really see the policy as
a problem. Brin said _his involvement_ was a mistake -- because _it tainted
his image and his credentials_ , not because the policy itself was wrong. I
suspect he still sees it as dirty work that _somebody_ has to do, just not
himself.

------
galfarragem
To change status quo you need to provide enough value to motivate that change:

Google Search: Search experience was completely disrupted. Since that moment
people could focus on what they needed (no disturbing ads) and be more
efficient.

Gmail: Google innovated and simplified a lot email experience. You can easily
measure the importance of Gmail to people by the importance of Gmail to the
Google brand.

Chrome: As an early adopter, I could feel specially the speed difference. I
always knew that would be a matter of time till Chrome control the market.

Google+: I never understood what value Google was adding to social networks.
Facebook at the time didn't need to be disrupted also. After some time G+ went
in the direction of Linkedin but couldn't add enough value to make people to
change also. IMHO Google+ weakens Google brand. As simple as that. Should be
closed? That is a good question.

~~~
vidarh
Facebook needed to be disrupted, but unfortunately the main way Facebook
needed (and needs) to be disrupted is in compartmentalising sharing better,
and while Circles accomplishes some of that, Googles real name policy pisses
all over it.

~~~
galfarragem
As a user of Facebook and Linkedin I'm only moderately happy with the
experience but I can't see myself changing soon. I would be happy to change to
one social network that could "compartmentalize sharing better" (using your
words) and be used for both social and work issues. If they could add some
twitter functionality would be a plus. Is not efficient using different
platforms all the time, would be easier to have one platform with different
"modes".

There is plenty of space to disrupt the market but the status quo here is very
strong. The problem is not if somebody changes or not, the problem is that
everybody needs to change in mass or the network will be useless.

------
adam74
I miss the days of Google Labs and twenty percent time.

~~~
tomrod
Me too. I remember being excited about seeing what Google's next big thing
was. I lost hope when Reader was shut down.

~~~
LoganCale
The Real Name policy was the beginning of the end for me, Reader being shut
down made me lose interest in all new Google products, and Snowden made me
stop using some of the ones I already had been.

~~~
vidarh
The Real Name policy is noteworthy from starting out being fundamentally
stupid at the "anyone who has spent a week online should know this" level, but
still seemingly just a dumb mistake, to being downright malicious and evil the
moment it was clear they had no intention of backtracking even after their
attention had been brought to the risks it put some people in.

------
johnchristopher
Just to be clear:

> OPINION: One month after creator and leader of Google+, Vic Gundotra,
> quietly quit, Google chief Sergey Brin told a conference audience last week
> that involvement in Google+ was "a mistake." He made the exact opposite
> statement in 2011.

Whose involvement are we talking about here ? Brin, Gundotra or Google ?

> If only someone could have stepped in and course-corrected Google+.

>

> Oh, right. Someone could have.

>

> The same someone that just told the world, "heh, oops" and walked away to go
> retreat back into himself, and play with his cars.

Is that someone Brin (who could have and has plenty of money to buy cars) or
Gundotra (who could have and left the company a month ago - with enough money
to play with cars I suppose) ?

(sorry for hand walking me but the style is confusing me)

~~~
maxerickson
I read it as being aimed at Brin.

It's sort of lazy and cheap to mostly use his hindsight in an article
criticizing him. On the other hand, I guess there was plenty said at the time
that called the real name policy a mistake.

------
bowlofpetunias
Google+ is just the most high profile symptom. The problem started when Google
started using strategies against the fundamental nature of the internet.

We always assumed that Google was "good" because they understood and embraced
the open and interconnected nature of the internet. They even stated so
explicitly.

Google+, but also many other Google strategies follow the same pattern: trying
to build walls instead of connecting, making things closed instead of more
open.

------
afarrell
For some reason, my email address is now linked to a name that is not mine.
I've not yet bothered to figure out how to change it, but I wish for the sake
of trans people that this error had been more common.

~~~
taejo
Gmail insists on respelling the name of one of my contacts; it's only one
letter different, but it's slightly embarrassing that I seem not to know his
name after eight years of working together.

~~~
maxerickson
Having never experienced anything like this from Gmail, I wonder if you have
the misspelling stored in a contact.

I even have a sort of contrary anecdote, I added an accent to a contact name a
few years ago and it has always just worked.

~~~
taejo
The misspelling seems to come from a (automatically created somehow?) Google+
profile.

------
RexRollman
Google+ was the beginning of the end where using Google service was concerned
for me. These days, I use Google only as a search engine and nothing more.

------
pasbesoin
"Opt in".

If you like e.g. "single sign-on", it should be your choice to set it up and
participate. Not coercion. Not coercion holding your existing investment in
various products (of which Google was and is acquiring ever more) hostage.

If what you are offering is of benefit to your users (should I use the word
"customers"? -- a whole other discussion), you should be able to sell it to
them -- on an "opt-in", "I'd like to use this feature" basis.

As Google+ rolled out, it became evident that it was anything but this.

True names. Then the stories -- accurate or not -- of account deletions.

I was damned if I was going to risk my longstanding Gmail account for the sake
of trying out Plus. Fortunately, the integration was not so quick and thorough
that I was at that time compelled to participate in Plus in order to keep that
account. (Sign up for Gmail now, and you get a Plus profile, like it or not.)

Plus has some nice technical features, and some of the conversation I
intersect (under a separate Google identity that I can afford to lose) during
my limited interaction with it, consist of more thoughtful and interesting
content.

But I'll never trust it -- Plus, that is.

Google showed us all, with Plus, the limits of their advocacy for us, the
users.

------
cromwellian
I think it is pretty refreshing for an executive to be self critical and admit
big mistakes. Sergey sounded authentic in that interview.

Scott Forestall was axed for Apple Maps, but seriously, you rewrite a Maps
service from the ground up from scratch and race to release it in iOS6, of
course it's going to be beta quality for a long time, since these things take
time to mature. I highly doubt the decision to include it in that state was
solely Scotts.

I like to see companies admit major strategic mistakes as opposed to
pretending everything is awesome for all time. (and no, Tim Cook's letter was
a kind of non-apology, only a single sentence really admitted any mistake 'We
fell short of our commitment')

~~~
nacs
Agreed on the admitting mistakes part but mentioning Scott Forstall as an
example doesn't follow.

From what I've read, Scott Forestall was fired less for the issues in the Maps
application and more for his refusal to sign any sort of apology afterwards
for its shortcomings. I'm sure there were other internal factors for his
firing but his refusal to publicly admit a mistake was a significant part.

~~~
cromwellian
Maybe he felt he didn't need to apologize because he was forced to rush and
release in iOS6?

What if the following conversation happened internally:

Scott: "Maps is not ready" Cook: "Maps must ship as part of iOS6, it's the
headline feature. We are committed to this time table." Scott: "But there are
lots of issues, lots of bugs." Cook: "Fix as many as possible before release,
but we are shipping."

Then, after the fiasco, he is asked to apologize, wouldn't you feel that the
people who didn't take your advice should be the ones to apologize?

------
facepalm
To be fair the SMS+Hangouts integration seems to be what users want. Everybody
and their dog is using Whatsapp by now, which is basically the same thing (I
think - haven't used it).

------
dm2
I'd love to see Google+ turn into a LinkedIn and Facebook killer. I just have
no use for Google+ at the moment. I don't really like the tiles display and
would prefer a list.

The YouTube integration doesn't bother me at all because 1) I don't post
YouTube comments, and 2) it's easy enough to just create a separate account
for using with services that you don't want associated with your main Google
account.

~~~
nobbyclark
IMO the silently majority is tired of a panopticon of "look it me now" social
services who's main use case is massaging users egos.

Google should start over, Android-first (instead of web -first) and make the
phone Addressbook / Google Contacts the focal point for everything social.
Look at WhatsApp - it does exactly this - your phone number is your ID and
your contacts is your social graph; how you interact with them - who you call,
message etc and when / where you do it - these are your circles

Meanwhile if you look at the direction Apple is going, eg new APIs for iCloud
eg fingerprint authentication, new APIs for foto management / sharing etc etc.
they look about ready to pounce on the whole of social...

~~~
vidarh
> Google should start over, Android-first (instead of web -first) and make the
> phone Addressbook / Google Contacts the focal point for everything social.
> Look at WhatsApp - it does exactly this - your phone number is your ID and
> your contacts is your social graph; how you interact with them - who you
> call, message etc and when / where you do it - these are your circles

I find this fascinating, as unless I'm misunderstanding you, you're basically
suggesting what G+ did to enrage users as described in the article, but
seemingly _worse_ :

Almost everyone have multiple "personalities". We don't share the same with
our grandmother, our friends, our boss, our old class mates, random strangers
and so on. This extends all the way to _which names we use_ , how we dress in
different situations, who we _give our phone number to_ etc..

At first Google seemed to "get" this better than Facebook when they released
G+. The moment Nymwars erupted it was clear they did not only not get this,
but actively refused to learn.

For some this is not about hiding information. For some it is. For some it is
a matter of actual _survival_ \- whether due to political involvement, or
because of threats of revenge or abuse (think people avoiding abusing ex-
partners etc.), or because of gender identity etc. (trans people have an
incredible high suicide rate due in part to the reactions of wider society; on
top of that there's actual violent reactions from people). Breaking
compartmentalisation puts peoples _lives_ at risk, not just cause embarrassing
moments.

The _first_ lesson one should learn in social, is that if you wish to create a
social network that reflects how people interact, then people need to be able
to full compartmentalise what different people see, down to and including your
name and who else you are interacting with, and you need to make sure data are
not easily leaking between those compartments and that needs to be _holy_.

In that respect, even _having_ a single, unified addressbook / contacts list
demonstrates that they don't understand (or has purposefully decided not to
care about) real social networks (as opposed to the "panopticon" service you
decry): It cuts as deep as not revealing all the information on all devices at
all times - devices can be shared, or lent out, or someone might just glance
at one at the wrong moment. It increases the risk of breaking
compartmentalisation accidentally unless users are very tech savvy: Suddenly
your device beeps, drawing attention to its screen, just as it displays a
message the person sitting next to the device should not have seen.

If you're lucky / extremely conventional / boring, you laugh it off. If you're
unlucky, it can cost you your job, your relationships, contact with your
family, or your life.

Social networks is not just some fluffy web-app thing - it's the fabric of
society, and they cut deep.

~~~
Pxtl
Exactly. If they'd required you use a real name under the hood but allowed you
to present different pseudonymous "facades" for each Circle, and then let you
just tie things like Youtube to a given facade? That would be wonderful.

It really seemed like that's the direction they had in mind at the start -
understanding that you have familial relationships, online relationships,
professional relationships, and letting you compartmentalize those.

But that was just an organizational tool. We needed it to be two-way - in that
you need to control your identity as it relates to those circles.

------
muzz
It sounds like Sergey is saying that _his_ involvement in Google+ was a
mistake, not that that the company going down that path was a mistake. I think
the author is taking the word "mistake" out of context:

"It was probably a mistake for me to be working on anything tangentially
related to social to begin with."

------
tomrod
I've been using G+ consistently for a week now after signing off from a
competing social network. I thoroughly enjoy it so far. Why is G+ dead in the
water?

EDIT: Fatfingered a random exclamation point

~~~
lbotos
I think most people feel Google's incessant need to push it on every product
leads to overexposure and this hate of G+. To further that, I closed my G+
account a few months ago due to inactivity. You'd better believe that the
whole process made it sound like I was going to lose access to my email, my
youtube account, etc. It wasn't a positive experience.

~~~
Rapzid
They dropped the ball on nearly every major integration in some spectacular
fashion, essentially. Be it forced integration, loosing anonymity, or botching
up the g-talk's chat history.

The chat history bit me. They used to have a really nice chat history that
integrated into the email seamlessly and had good export options. It even
worked through IMAP. Unfortunately that all disappeared when they made g-talk
hangouts. Essentially it was a duct-tape job like mentioned above. Apparently
their storage back-end is quite different and they didn't put the work in to
allow for easy retrieval and review of full chat histories. Unfortunately I
needed a mass of chat histories(a year) for Visa purposes and the switch was
about two thirds in. Retrieving the newer stuff became a part time job :|

Other than that I kinda like G+. I also like real identity movement.
Eventually I believe that will be a big differentiator for swaths of the
internet. The civil, real name sites. And the seedy, anonymous underbelly.

------
yuhong
I like to submit things like this to HN for a reason:
[http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3106555&cid=41288357](http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3106555&cid=41288357)

And BTW I am thinking that the EU privacy policy fiasco is probably related.
And to think that the EU courts recently ruled that current data protection
laws requires that search engines must remove results on request.

------
joeevans1000
We are google's product. We are bundled and cleaned and sold to advertisers.
The google+ process was just a plan to tell their customers that they had a
nice, leaner, more refined product. Previously, their customers were
complaining that the product wasn't as verifiable. This is a bit like the
organic food certification process.

------
model-m
Google+ made it just a little too clear that Google is in the business of
remembering everything about those who interact with it.

The attitude of "Google knows best what's good for you, and doesn't have to
justify itself or even acknowledge your objections" also doesn't mesh with
what a social network should be, in the minds of many.

------
infinity
So far it has always been a good policy for me to take these lines literally:

>> Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information

>> and make it universally accessible ...

[http://www.google.com/about/company/](http://www.google.com/about/company/)

------
_random_
"Brin told ... that ... he was “kind of a weirdo” and "It was probably a
mistake for me to be working on anything tangentially related to social to
begin with." \- I respect him more now. Being late to market was probably a
bigger mistake though.

~~~
ulfw
You respect him for noticing this only now?

------
fzltrp
I don't think that G+ was a mistake. The only real issue is the real name
policy, though I fail to see how they'd be able to enforce it. People could
create alternate email addresses with fake names (and some did), and use it
when they want to participate social "i-events" without giving up their id.
It's been like that before G+, and it would only take a small move from them
to correct it. Of course, the downside of this is that they wouldn't be able
to claim a number of real users. But could any social site?

Btw, am I the only one to find the article title offensive, and unworthy of a
place like zdnet? I wasn't a regular reader of their columns, I don't think
that will help.

~~~
ben0x539
The problem with "people could just create fake identities" is that they'd
basically be permanently living with the fear of being caught by google and
having their entire identity erased, and all the comments would just be "duh,
what did they expect creating an alternate email address with a fake name?"

That a bad policy is inconsistently enforced doesn't really make it any less
harmful. Selective enforcement is more evil if anything, imo.

> Btw, am I the only one to find the article title offensive, and unworthy of
> a place like zdnet?

It's much less offensive than the G+ real name policy, so that's a weird
focus. ;)

~~~
fzltrp
Well sure, as long as the real name policy is actively enforcable by G (which
I doubt, but someone else apparently had to go through their enforcment
practice), there's a risk. Then maybe it means that G isn't the right medium
to express oneself anonymously and have an official virtual life. As I said,
the only real problem is that policy.

> It's much less offensive than the G+ real name policy, so that's a weird
> focus. ;)

I don't think we have the same definition of offensive (please correct me if
my second language english is wrong). That policy was harmful, but I wouldn't
qualify it as offensive. I think the article provides good examples where it
was harmful.

That said, if you don't think it's inappropriate for someone to use anonymity
(or is it her real name?) to insult someone else, you won't mind if I finish
this comment by the same sentence? I won't, because I know that it's not
necessary, and it would undermine the message I'm trying to convey, as it does
in her case.

~~~
ben0x539
> I don't think we have the same definition of offensive (please correct me if
> my second language english is wrong). That policy was harmful, but I
> wouldn't qualify it as offensive. I think the article provides good examples
> where it was harmful.

I'm also not a native english speaker so I might well be misusing the term.

To me, it's not so much that it's harmful, but that the people it's harming,
who are likely already marginalized, disadvantaged groups, are just entirely
discounted and brushed off because they don't conform to some convenient but
real-world-incompatible idea of how people live their identities. That harm
and those people are apparently not as important as some business goal. That
offends me.

Meanwhile, someone on the internet getting angry enough to use an insult like
that is just a form of expression, it helps to define the emotional context of
the writing, conveys some indignance, etc.

Why would an insult convey more offense than all the criticism in the article
already does? I guess one might argue that abandoning a courteous "tone" of
writing betrays a lack of respect. Imo the article already makes it pretty
clear (especially towards the end) that respect has been lost, so the insult
hardly makes that "offense" any worse. The author doesn't feel respected by
Brin and feels exploited, so why would Brin be owed civility in turn?

It's also a particularly harmless insult that as far as I can tell has no vile
connotations and implies nothing worse about the subject than that they're a
jerk, so basically that they come off as disrespectful. It's pretty easy to
convey that one thinks that someone is a jerk, or an asshole, or whatever, and
it's usually considered okay to do so, so I don't see why being direct about
it is more offensive rather than just, say, more abrasive or less polite.

In the situation of basically-helpless end user raging against the machine
that is Google, I don't really think anonymity matters either. Unlike in a
case of actual harmful harassment or abuse, I don't think Brin has a
legimitate interest in discovering the whatever personal information about the
insulting party, and if he thinks he does there are probably plenty of legal
ways to go about it.

And anyway, whether the name on the article is the author's "real name" or not
(contemplating which seems kind of ironic in this context), it's at most
~pseudonymous~, not anonymous at all. The name is definitely linked to a real
identity, and anyway, authors have been getting away with completely made-up
pen names for ages.

It's kind of strange to me that apparently it's more appropriate to insult
someone if one puts one's real (however that is measured) identity on the
line, given how wildly that varies in significance and consequences. That'd
set the bar to entry at really unfairly different heights for different
people.

That's a lot of words about this sidetrack, sorry for probably boring you, but
I'm kinda fascinated by how people differ in deciding whether something is
offensive.

~~~
fzltrp
>That harm and those people are apparently not as important as some business
goal. That offends me.

I understand your point.

> Why would an insult convey more offense than all the criticism in the
> article already does?

That really depends on the aim of the article. If it is to express a feeling,
fine, she did express her feeling. If it is to make a point, she shouldn't, or
one might simply say she cannot have a rational discussion, because it simply
doesn't prove anything. Google didn't use insult, it undisclosed private
information. While it is senseless, it's not an offense, in the sense that
there's no proof that it was intended to hurt. I don't believe that S. Brin
woke up one day with the idea of harming people, or do you think that is what
happened? If it were the case: if I had been the victim of a deliberate
attempt at hurting me by disclosing things about me that I consider private, I
would be seriously pissed. The question is: was it deliberate, or was it
simply an error, or a misunderstanding? People make mistakes, that's
unfortunate, but it's understandable. She, otoh, cursed voluntarily.

> It's also a particularly harmless insult that as far as I can tell

That's anyone's appreciation. In a different culture, it might well be the
worse thing you could say to someone. The fact that it carry already a
insulting connotation is enough: there's no way someone could take it as a
compliment, thus whether it is harmless or the worse one could say is besides
the point, the message is clear.

> That's a lot of words about this sidetrack

For a minor issue, that happened in _the title_, but I surely don't care that
much.

~~~
ben0x539
> If it is to make a point, she shouldn't, or one might simply say she cannot
> have a rational discussion, because it simply doesn't prove anything.

One might say that, but I don't think that would delegitimatize her position
at all. If someone seeks to be offended to avoid having to engage with the
actual argument, that's on them, and they probably didn't need the pretense of
caring about the insult to begin with.

> The question is: was it deliberate, or was it simply an error, or a
> misunderstanding? People make mistakes, that's unfortunate, but it's
> understandable.

The problems with google's approach have been pointed out almost immediately
after their policy became known. If it was a simple mistake in the sense of an
accident, it would have been corrected then. Google might not have set out to
cause harm, but drafting their policies and sticking to them in contempt of
the harm they are causing is a deliberate, voluntary move.

For a hamhanded car analogy, if someone parks in a parking space for the
disabled out of laziness, and now some guy in a wheelchair has to cover
another block's worth of distance because he had to park elsewhere, it's not
okay just because they didn't do it to cause him harm, it's still bad because
they didn't care enough about not causing him harm to avoid it. Something that
hurts a disadvantaged group out of disregard for their needs rather than out
of malice is still cause for offense and not just a mistake.

> In a different culture, it might well be the worse thing you could say to
> someone.

I think that's really unlikely. I might conjecture a hypothetical culture
where insults are expected and polite, but I think it's sufficient to look at
the actual cultural context. Correct me if I am missing something, but
"jerkface" is the blandest, least serious insult I can think of. It doesn't
invoke gross body parts, religion, sexual language, the subject's
intelligence, morals, looks or status. In fact, I cannot imagine anyone using
it without irony, going intentionally for a weak and childish insult.

> For a minor issue, that happened in _the title_, but I surely don't care
> that much.

Yeah, just to be clear, I didn't mean to complain that you started talking
about the title, just that I needed so many words to respond.

~~~
fzltrp
> The problems with google's approach have been pointed out almost immediately
> after their policy became known.

I've been the devil's advocate til now, I will not give up so easily. If
people knew about this policy, then they couldn't have opt out of the service
and look for something more amenable to their needs of privacy, couldn't they?

>For a hamhanded car analogy, if someone parks in a parking space for the
disabled out of laziness, and now some guy in a wheelchair has to cover
another block's worth of distance because he had to park elsewhere,

The policy there wasn't that someone took that reserved parking place, it's
that the place simply disappeared from that parking lot. So yeah, it does
suck, but there are other parking lots to use (which also mean other shops, if
that guy in a wheelchair liked Google's ones, tough luck).

> I think that's really unlikely. I might conjecture a hypothetical culture
> where insults are expected and polite, but I think it's sufficient to look
> at the actual cultural context. Correct me if I am missing something, but
> "jerkface" is the blandest, least serious insult I can think of. It doesn't
> invoke gross body parts, religion, sexual language, the subject's
> intelligence, morals, looks or status. In fact, I cannot imagine anyone
> using it without irony, going intentionally for a weak and childish insult.

Really? Do kids use that insult? Well, I don't speak English fluently enough
(especially cursing), and I'm not going to pull a dictionary definition to
verify it. If indeed it's as you say, then that's a misunderstanding on my
side, and I clearly deserved a downvote for that. I'll take your word for it.

------
chaser7016
Google Buzz and now Google+.

Google stop trying to be Facebook! You need to change course and focus on the
consumer(customer service) & their privacy.

Otherwise others will and are starting to eat your lunch!

~~~
saraid216
Good job. You are now merely 3 years behind everyone else on your commentary.

Your next quest is to formulate a complaint about Google Reader shutting down.

------
neurobro
When someone now says doing something was a mistake, I sure hope the statement
is in stark contrast with their sentiments at the time they were doing it.
Otherwise, why do it?

------
vpeters25
I think G+ could've owned the "social internet" without the "real id" rule.

They had the chance to drive facebook and twitter out of business... they blew
it.

------
andyidsinga
> Google+ broke our trust

Google Reader did it for me. ..and did it for every product where I'm on
paying $. I have hardly used google+ and I haven't missed a thing.

------
tlogan
What is the future of Google+? Is Google trying to pivot it into something
different? Or Google+ will be just a platform (for login, profile info, etc).

------
serf
I think many of the policies that have been changed towards the usage of a
real name are intrusive to privacy, but I have no pity on people who require
privacy and lose it after willingly continuing to use a service that is known
to conduct such practices.

~~~
tabio
That's a rather harsh way to limit your pity. I won't go so far as making the
standard analogies of victim-blaming.

------
hartator
[http://hartator.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/fire-vic-
gundotra/](http://hartator.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/fire-vic-gundotra/)

------
brownbat
Using and loving G+ and Hangouts to this day. I like how easy it is to get a
group chat or a video chat going in the browser, and I like the increased
control over sharing I have, especially relative to FB. (I can even share with
people who don't want to log in because they hate the service. My FB friends
cannot.)

I'm trying to sift through the complaints to see if they're relevant to me,
but haven't had much luck so far.

1\. Everything

Complaints on the order of "it broke everything" just seem hyperbolic and
silly.

2\. Nymwars

I think they should allow pseudonyms, but I don't blame the company for trying
build something tied a little tighter to real world identities after fighting
a decade long war against fraud and spam behind the scenes. I feel like it's
within their prerogative to say they're building an identity service, because
pseudonym based logins are already widely available. Faulting them for that
choice is a bit like saying you don't like Gmail because you think email is
stupid.

3\. YouTube

Among the other major complaints is that they broke YouTube comments, ie, the
worst den of inane and offensive comments on the internet since 4chan. Good
for them, the team deserves a medal.

Someone made a mashup just to illustrate the depravity of comments on the
video site a few years ago:
[http://comments.thatsaspicymeatball.com/](http://comments.thatsaspicymeatball.com/)

4\. Popularity

Probably the other tacit criticism is that Google launched a service that
didn't immediately trounce all other social media sites, delivering everything
for everyone. It's used by a _mere_ 350 million people. It's been criticized
for that number being only a third of its registered base, but that seems
perfectly on track or better than estimates for other social media sites.
Twitter's active userbase is probably roughly 20%, for example:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-total-registered-
user...](http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-total-registered-users-v-
monthly-active-users-2013-11)

It's weird that a site with 350 million active monthly users is considered an
embarrassing failure. I'm sure lots of services would be happy to trade
userbases with G+.

It had a few cool features. It wasn't world changing. I feel like it hit some
of the Segwey effect, a victim of its hype more than of its failings.

5\. Aesthetics.

I feel this is the most inarguable complaint. Some people don't like the style
of G+, don't like its approach to usability, or find its sharing system
needlessly complex or confusing. By all means, these individuals should not
use the service. I don't like the look and feel of Pinterest. I shouldn't use
Pinterest. To each her own. I worry some authors subtly shift this argument
from "I don't like the feel of it," or even, "My friends don't like it," to
"It is a failure of design that no one should use." Seems a bit unfair.

I believe there are good usability guidelines, but I don't subscribe to the
belief that there is a perfect one size fits all, that all implementations of
any service will eventually converge to one platonic form. Competition is good
because we all like different things, each find different styles more
intuitive.

I'd be happy to consider other arguments, but so far allegations of the
service's abject horribleness seem somewhat exaggerated.

~~~
brownbat
I suspected there weren't very many legitimate criticisms, that this was
mostly emotional iconoclasm.

Silent downvotes are a sort of confirming evidence.

------
wfjackson
If there's one video that shows off the purposefully confusing Google+ and
Youtube integration mess, its this one of a woman literally crying because of
it.

Warning: Strong language

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccxiwu4MaJs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccxiwu4MaJs)

~~~
cbellet
Hey, I can find videos of people angry at about anything that exists.

Apple:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFOx81Lm34c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFOx81Lm34c)
Facebook:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhPzx2KLoUg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhPzx2KLoUg)
Nature:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJNqn-Y3pdY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJNqn-Y3pdY)

Ah! Why is it so hard to make everyone happy?

~~~
rando289
> Hey, I can find videos of people angry at about anything that exists.

Actually, you can't, and your post is a bit rediculous.

For "features of websites that are widely used", how many of them are part of
youtube crying videos? Probably ~0.0001% and it certainly could be useful to
call one out.

~~~
VonGuard
See, this is why Google wanted real names on Youtube. We've all read Youtube
comments. They are the single worst comments on the Internet. Typically
racist, usually mean, often obscene. Google really, through all this, just
wanted to make the comments better on YouTube, I think. They heard everyone
bitching and figured this was a way to make things less caustic. It didn't
help, though...

~~~
pessimizer
I found them hilarious and often insightful expressions of honest humanity.
Now, they're just shit. It's sad how much we're willing to give up to avoid
every 100th comment being an aimless racial slur.

------
dang
We changed the title from "Thanks for nothing, jerkface" to the first subtitle
of the article, which (a) isn't linkbait and (b) is more or less what the
article seems to be about.

------
compsci_mofo
Google is interesting. Choc full of academically bright people, yet
collectively dumb as fuck. Shame there is not a phd for common sense or being
down to Earth.

~~~
tabio
Can you name one organization of 50,000 people that is collectively smart?

~~~
mnemonicsloth
Large markets are very smart.

Smart is not necessarily nice. Without nice, incremental returns to smart may
be negative. Furthermore, the terminal goal of a market is to give some group
exactly what it wants. Such groups are often large, and their wants are
defined by how their members act -- usually when others are not looking. A
market does not care what anyone _says_ they want.

It's a wonder the damn things aren't banned.

~~~
pessimizer
I liked the original wording better. This is yet another failure of Congress,
not google.

Sorry for posting libertarian downvote-bait.

------
hellbreakslose
Oh look its another goth chick blogging about Google and whats bad and
whatever... Go back in your cave... noone told you to get involved with
Google+ neither Google will go with you cause you based your life around
Google+ ...

Why people nowadays take everything so granted... Guess what before 90 years
people were going to the toilet...hmmm on their GARDENS!

------
raldi
_> With Google+, it became clear that we were all little more than webs of
flesh spun over packages of saleable data._

What data is allegedly being sold, and who is Google selling it to?

~~~
vidarh
I don't see anywhere where the article alleges that the data is for sale, but
that it is saleable.

One way of capitalizing on that, without selling the data, is to sell access
to advertise on the basis of that data.

The point is not to claim that Google is selling our data, but just another
way of stating that we're the product, not the customer.

~~~
raldi
The point is to try to lump Google together with companies that literally _do_
sell customer data, e.g., credit card providers, supermarkets, stores at the
mall, magazine publishers... They literally sell your non-anonymized, non-
aggregated data, period.

It's an unfair lumping because what Google does is a far cry from that.

~~~
vidarh
I didn't read it that way at all. I can see how it _can_ be read that way, but
it can likewise simply be read as making it clear that Google cares about
advertisers rather than users.

Whether or not a subjective interpretation is that she is "trying to lump"
Google together with these companies, she did not come straight out and make
such an allegation in the article. When you then imply in your comment that
she did, it's a bit rich to accuse her of "unfair lumping" afterwards.

------
adwf
News flash: Company co-founder and senior executive publicly supports own
products!

~~~
adam74
News flash: Sergey now thinks that his working so closely on Google+ was a
mistake.

~~~
adwf
Now that it's publicly dead in the water sure. But saying anything negative
about your own products while they're still trying to push it as the next big
thing? It'll never happen. Any executive that tried would be fired or
sidelined. Public comments like that are purely a matter of marketing and PR,
individuals (particularly senior ones) will always back the company message.

This is why you never hear anything from Microsoft other than Windows8 is
great! Or alternatively, you never hear anything from Apple at all. It's the
PR department's job, not the senior execs.

------
pistle
That's a lot of counterhate. Not wholly unwarranted, but severely one-sided.

Corporate products are not for dissidents or the privacy-focused. Period. The
end. You need to find alts designed to be private and/or pay to not be
subsidized for the profitizing of YOU - whoever you are or want to be.

Google wants to fold you into their walled garden by tilting all their
products towards each other. Shocking. I can't think of any other... oh yeah
right... EVERY massive tech company does this. Otherwise one of the other
massive tech companies will eat their lunch within 10 years. You are the frog.
They are the scorpion.

Also, part of force g+ is what you are seeing grow widely. Enough people are
harmed or disgusted with the level of gaming of anonymity that the trolls have
achieved that the real identity movement has grown pretty quickly.

I doubt large corporate interests will be able to find it profitable, over any
minimally significant span of time, to preserve privacy and be a platform for
social change/justice. The unintended consequence is also being a platform for
the lulz. Don't be evil meets don't be bankrupt. If your platform is a
cesspool, nobody will pay to swim there.

~~~
vidarh
A lot of this hate presumably stems from Google's "Don't be evil". Google has
been given a lot of trust. They then demonstrated very clearly that they can't
be trusted to care _at all_ , and are prepared to go as far as putting users
lives at risk over users _names_.

> Also, part of force g+ is what you are seeing grow widely. Enough people are
> harmed or disgusted with the level of gaming of anonymity that the trolls
> have achieved that the real identity movement has grown pretty quickly.

So give people options to block people who don't use a real name (but realise
that for the _vast_ majority of G+ users you have _no idea_ if they use their
real name vs. just use a name that sounds real enough to not get flagged by
Google) from being able to comment on your posts. That would address the
concern of people who have a problem with anonymous or pseudonymous posts,
without forcing such a policy on other subsets of users where it in many cases
is a problem. Trans users and political dissidents is just a couple of the
worst affected.

There are many sub-cultures where handles are more common than real name -
there are hundreds of people I would recognize by handle, from e.g. the demo
scene, musicians/artists, but where I would not have clue who they are if
going by their "real" name.

> I doubt large corporate interests will be able to find it profitable, over
> any minimally significant span of time, to preserve privacy and be a
> platform for social change/justice.

For this reason, I expect we'll soon enough find that companies targeting
certain groups of countries, like the EU, will eventually find themselves
facing legal restrictions on demanding/publicizing real names on the grounds
that it is deeply discriminatory against certain classes of people. I'd expect
trans groups to eventually go after that if it starts becoming too difficult
to use products and services without a legally recognized name.

