
Shipping the Google in Google+ - sahaj
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/shipping-google-in-google.html
======
nikcub
I thought the advantage of having the +1 button in the browser is that you can
then block all of those damn sharing widgets on websites so that these social
networks don't know every website you visit because of the beacons.

But the +1 button extension will send _every page you visit_ back to Google,
with your unique user id as part of the information sent back.

This is just insane. There is absolutely no reason for this information to be
sent back, and it is completely identifiable and all in plain text. The
installer says that it _can_ access all your website data, not that it _does_
access it and _sends it_ back to Google.

I removed the extension immediately.

~~~
abraham
> I thought the advantage of having the +1 button in the browser is that you
> can then block all of those damn sharing widgets on websites so that these
> social networks don't know every website you visit because of the beacons.

The advantage of of having the +1 button in the browser is so you can +1/share
sites that don't include the +1 button themselves.

> But the +1 button extension will send every page you visit back to Google,
> with your unique user id as part of the information sent back

There is now way to know if you have +1'd a page without sending your unique
id with. A button that doesn't tell you if you have +1'd something isn't very
useful and you will continually be +1'ing pages over and over again.

> This is just insane. There is absolutely no reason for this information to
> be sent back, and it is completely identifiable and all in plain text. The
> installer says that it can access all your website data, not that it does
> access it and sends it back to Google.

If an extension has permissions to access "your data on all websites" there is
no way to prevent it from also sending your data to all websites. HTTP is
request and response and not very useful with only one or the other.

The Chrome Web Store says

" __ _THIS ISN’T THE USUAL YADA YADA!_ __

In addition to the practices described in the Google +1 Button Privacy Policy,
by installing this extension, all of the pages and URLs you visit will be sent
to Google in order to retrieve +1 information."

The install page linked to from the blog post should be more clear about what
the +1 button sends to Google.

None of your data is sent in plain text however. It is all over SSL to
<https://clients6.google.com/rpc>.

> I removed the extension immediately.

Good for you. No one is forcing you to use it.

~~~
nikcub
> There is now way to know if you have +1'd a page without sending your unique
> id with.

localStorage or asking which URLs have been plus 1'd, not the other way
around. There are plenty of ways of doing it without sending a request back to
google on ever. single. page. load.

I found the disclosure about all website visiting being sent to Google only
after looking for it and clicking through some pages. 95% of users will never
find that since being alerted to it isn't part of the standard install flow.

~~~
abraham
> localStorage or asking which URLs have been plus 1'd, not the other way
> around. There are plenty of ways of doing it without sending a request back
> to google on ever. single. page. load.

This introduces all kinds of issues with complexity of having to support
multiple storage locations, and inconsistency/sync lag caused +1'ing pages on
multiple computers or buttons from the page rather then the extension. If I
have two computers and +1 a few pages with one then switch to the other it
would either have to download a list of _all_ pages I +1'd. Which could get up
into the thousands or tens of thousands or some sort of complex pagination,
diff, merge feature. It just isn't worth it.

~~~
vilhelm_s
Chrome already does all that for bookmark syncing.

The list of +1'ed websites will never grow _very_ large, because it is created
one manual click at a time by a single user. 10,000 urls is only about a
megabyte, and if you send diffs you'd rarely have to download more than a
small fraction of them.

------
tantalor
> all of the pages and URLs you visit will be sent to Google in order to
> retrieve +1 information

This is a deal breaker. There's no reason that Google couldn't have used a
hash of the URL.

~~~
ajross
To be fair, that quote lives in the following (verbatim) context:

    
    
      ***THIS ISN’T THE USUAL YADA YADA!***
      
      In addition to the practices described in the Google +1 Button Privacy
      Policy, by installing this extension, all of the pages and URLs you
      visit will be sent to Google in order to retrieve +1
      information. Examples of this information include whether you’ve
      previously +1’d the page and how many people have already +1’d the
      page. Google’s use of this information is described further in the
      following help center article
      (http://www.google.com/support/profiles/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1319578).
    

At least they're not trying to hide anything, recognize that some people will
have privacy concerns, and are drawing attention to this fact. The linked FAQ
claims that they don't store the information persistently. Though I suppose it
could be argued that this policy is subject to change in the future.

------
notatoad
the chrome integration plugins look pretty good, but i really don't understand
the utility of the youtube integration. if they had built some g+ sharing into
the youtube interface, i could see that. but instead it looks like they've
essentially built a youtube radio into the g+ page. why?

~~~
ajross
FWIW, I think this is entirely the wrong direction to integrate. I've been
loving the "auto-sync photos and videos" feature of the Android G+ app, as it
elminates a tedious manual step and as a result I get to show off more videos
of my cute toddler.

... or I could, if my family is on G+. And of course they're not: they're on
facebook. So what I want is the ability to simply move the G+ videos over to
my youtube account. But I can't.

~~~
gujk
And YouTube's lack of a mobile site for publishing makes it excruciatingly
painful to share a video uploaded from a phonecam. (As does YouTube's lack of
privately-shared "albums" like Picasa has.)

~~~
ajross
Not so bad, really. On Android phones at least you select "share" while
viewing the video and pick "youtube" from the list. But you still have to wait
for the upload, it's not "just there" the way it is with g+.

------
buddylw
I was super excited when Google+ came out. I am a total Google fanboy. At
least, I was a week ago. Then I found they didn't support their paying
customers (apps users). So I waited and waited.

Finally supported a week ago! I'm PUMPED about trying google+. Except there's
not a lot going on there and there is no api to integrate it with other social
networks. It doesn't really have a purpose.

Then Google completely destroys Google Reader. My absolute favorite website
can no longer create an RSS feed for other RSS users making it impossible for
users to contribute content to Google reader.

Now I'm just pissed. Gmail is still the best mail service and I like my
android phone, but Google has made so many terrible decisions lately -
especially around Google plus - I don't care anymore. I'm done. If google
decides to right its wrongs I will care about its services again.

If I were google I would drop everything and do the following as quickly as
possible: 1.) Release an API for Google+ 2.) integrate google reader with
google+. No, I'm not talking about adding a share button. I'm talking about
full integration so that Google+ can feed data back into reader.

I doubt that they will be able to accomplish this fast enough to keep Google
reader from dying. I'm sure some other service (like Hivemined) will fill the
void, but they really need to get moving on that API if they want to save
google+.

~~~
gcl2
1\. There is already a Google+ API. <http://lmgtfy.com/?q=google%20plus%20api>

2\. It's always funny to hear these 'was-fanboy-turned-hater' stories because
they suggest passion and then some kind of spurned ex-gf syndrome. If you
don't like Google products anymore, don't use them. Move on brother.

------
ajanuary
Hopefully the G+ chrome plugin will stay as a plugin. I'm not too keen on it
being integrated into it as a product as a whole.

~~~
DanielRibeiro
Well, it is open source, so we can always yank it out if they try to push it
on to us.

------
ktusznio
Is a popup really the best way to get YouTube into Google+?

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curiousfiddler
That's not a smart integration in my view. Out of nowhere you place a youtube
icon on a random location on the screen. And the pop up that follows that.
You're basically switching the user's context when in fact your goal is to let
her stick. There is something wrong going on with the UI design folks at
google it seems.

------
curiousfiddler
Try letting people hangout with popular folks (from tech, media, science and
other fields). Announce those hangouts. Let there be participants and viewers.
Sell hangout guys!

