
How Mark Zuckerberg Led Facebook’s War on Google Plus - uptown
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06/how-mark-zuckerberg-led-facebooks-war-to-crush-google-plus
======
wmeredith
"That unfortunate first impression, plus the mischaracterization in the film
The Social Network, was probably responsible for half of the ever present
suspicion and paranoia surrounding Facebook’s motives. But occasionally Zuck
would have a charismatic moment of lucid greatness, and it would be stunning."

The lockdown thing is interesting, but you have to wade through this
blathering, fawning, puff-piece nonsense. There are many more such gag-
inducing sections in this piece. Good luck.

~~~
billmalarky
It was worth the read for me to learn about this story alone in my opinion
[https://www.quora.com/How-did-Chris-Putnam-get-hired-at-
Face...](https://www.quora.com/How-did-Chris-Putnam-get-hired-at-
Facebook?share=1)

~~~
aoeuasdf1
Thanks for saving me the time!

------
palakchokshi
This is a fluff piece, that much is certain. To summarize it

1\. Mark Zuckerberg is the Messiah, albeit with human traits of failure.
(Makes a messiah more relatable)

2\. Google pooh poohs Facebook

3\. Google sits up and takes notice as Facebook's users pick up and Vic
Gundotra's kids and their friends tell Vic that Facebook is where they are at
and Vic goes to Larry Page and whispers warnings in his ears.

4\. Larry bestows knighthood on Vic to wage war on Facebook.

5\. Vic looks at the Google Landscape and thinks "I bet I can get 400 million
users by bombarding Google properties with G+ buttons but that would be too
easy so I am going to only allow people with invites to become users. Come on
I need a challenge!!"

6\. Zuckerberg looks at G+ and Google's search users and thinks "Holy God in
Heaven! My flock is under attack"

7\. Zuckerberg ushers his flock into the pen and closes the gates.

8\. The flock sits in the pen and does what they had been doing though a
little more carefully now.

9\. Vic looks at the barren landscape of G+ and thinks "There's no one here. I
better put cardboard cutouts of people here so Larry doesn't revoke my
knighthood"

10\. Mark's flock looks at the cutouts and laughs their asses off. They drink
some more Kool Aid.

11\. G+ is burned to the ground by all the bombardment Vic did and Vic tucks
tail and leaves.

12\. Mark opens the gates of the pen and his flock are let out and they
rejoice. The author of this article thinks Mark is a genius for herding all
his flock into the pen and hunkering down.

13\. "That's how you "lead" wars, bitch", proclaims the Messiah.

 _sarcasm_

~~~
antongm
Sure took a while to summarize all that fluff.

~~~
palakchokshi
ever tried to compress cotton candy into a solid ball? it takes a while :)

------
fishnchips
Zuck should have read Sun Tzu instead of Cato - "If you wait by the river long
enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by." I'm not sure how much of
the G+ failure can really be attributed to any particular activity of FB as a
company.

~~~
antongm
I know that proverb via a popular Spanish version, and I do quote it in the
book, though not in reference to Google Plus.

~~~
fishnchips
If you knew the other side of the story - how folks at Google felt about G+ -
you'd know what I mean. Historically there's been a ton of internal pushback
against many C-level decisions. Killing Reader was one instance where we had
petitions, public outrages and a few ragequits. But nothing ever came close to
how demoralizing G+ was. Lots of folks genuinely believed in G's "mission" and
joined the company to make the world a better place. No, seriously, a ton of
people believed it. Seeing how cynical G's play against FB was and how
willingly G trampled its core values in the process lots of people simply lost
faith in the company. Most of them stayed but the magic was gone. I think at
some stage it became clear that if you push this pedal to the metal the
company will simply implode.

~~~
dredmorbius
That corresponds strongly with my (outsiders) view, and conversations I've had
with a few Googlers. Though I'm also aware that decisions at _any_
organisation can be unpopular, and in a large company, you'll have responses.

But G+ seemed to push the strain _quite_ high.

------
dredmorbius
1\. Yes, Facebook have won the Social war. To date.

2\. Yes, Zuckerberg managed to avoid technical errors and tarpits, mostly, to
get there.

3\. No, the "Lockdown" thing had little to do with it. If anything it may well
have been counterproductive.

4\. God what a horribly written, horribly analysed piece of glurge this is.

5\. Harvard.

6\. Google shot themselves in the foot. Repeatedly. With tremendous technical
ability. With tremendous effect. Taking a service I _wanted_ to like, _wanted_
to find useful, and _wanted_ to support, and uttershly gobshiting it.

Put the blame squarely at the feet of Vic Gundotra. And more squarely: at the
feet of Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt. The rot does straight to
the top. All four men did a tremendous disservice to Google, torpedoed massive
amounts of brand equity and consumer trust, and have done very, very, very
little to redeem it.

I've dug at G+, critiqued it, analysed it, and compared it with other
alternatives. All in the hopes of finding a decent goddamned place for
intelligent conversation online.

Hell if I know where it's at.

(HN is a small piece, but only a small piece, and not without its own major
faults.)

More:
[https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/SCqMujFZ...](https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/SCqMujFZC5b)

------
abalone
_> How about Facebook’s first version of Search... mostly useful for checking
out your friends’ single female friends_

A minor dig but this is the sort of subtle male-centric POV that should be
filtered out of tech journalism. Straight women use Facebook too, check out
profiles. What's more, they constitute 4/5ths of Vanity Fair's readership.[1]
This is speaking to women, subtly telling them that tech is mainly tools for
guys.

Comes up all the time in other contexts. Like I was watching Tinker Bell the
other day, and it's basically 100% femmy fairy girls EXCEPT they made the
nerdy techy builder characters boys. I'm like, come on...

[1] [http://www.condenast.com/brands/vanity-fair/media-
kit/print](http://www.condenast.com/brands/vanity-fair/media-kit/print)

~~~
antongm
Yeah, I'm not speculating. This was the most popular query. No bigger
implications meant to the observation.

------
leonroy
To be honest Zuckerberg could've taken an annual sabbatical and it wouldn't
have made a jot of difference to Google Plus's future.

When G+ came out Facebook was pretty damn popular amongst my peers and younger
friends and colleagues. G+ had some interest I'll grant you but the big
question to everyone I know was 'Why? I have Facebook.' Despite that I and a
lot of friends signed up. The problem was that Google's social network felt
like a geeky waste land. Like a place where you post things that you don't
care if anyone else sees.

Pity because from what I understand their photos app has uncanny facial
recognition and auto tagging capabilities. Their email clearly is solid.
Hangouts is also pretty damn good. Google have so much opportunity in the
social space if they could tie all these services together in a compelling way
but they really seem to be missing some key ingredients - thoughtful
leadership perhaps?

~~~
beagle3
The tie in was flakier in the past, and at some points in time was done in a
strong-arming way, which killed a lot of goodwill (YouTube unification, real
name policy -- enforced from day 1 much more vigorously than Facebook and
applying to old gmail accounts, ...) and there was not enough to start with
anyway). Couple that with the Buzz fiasco before it .... But that would not
have mattered if FB wasn't there.

The real problem is network effect: Most people were already on Facebook, and
maintaining two presences (FB and G+) was a chore. So most people kept to FB.
Everyone I know kept their main profile on FB, and had a "professional" or
"interest-based" profile on G+, which naturally saw about 10% or less
activity.

------
6stringmerc
You know, back when I riffed on the great poem "Ozymandias" in the context of
Zuckerberg and Facebook[1] I thought maybe, just maybe I was over-reaching on
the whole ego-drive thing with Zuckerberg, but after reading this, not so
much.

[1]
[https://medium.com/@6StringMerc/zuckermandias-d1fa241c4d56#....](https://medium.com/@6StringMerc/zuckermandias-d1fa241c4d56#.akyodf12g)

~~~
CamperBob2
I don't think anyone really gets that poem, possibly not even Shelley himself.
_The words remain._ And maybe that's all ol' Ozy wanted to leave behind.

~~~
6stringmerc
No no no no that poem is very clear. Ozy built a giant statue to himself to
lord over all that he ruled upon. When the narrator came across the
inscription, all that was left was the pedestal and the feet of the once giant
statue. Just as the statue had disappeared into the sands of time - while the
inscription of bragging remained - so had the kingdom.

The point of the poem is akin to "the bigger they are the harder they fall" if
you will.

------
wonkaWonka
Uh, pretty obvious that Google Plus just wasn't a product that could stand on
it's own merit.

Just like Microsoft's terrible tablets weren't done in by any other tablet
maker, and were cursed with enough problems to get a cold shoulder at the cash
register.

I don't even use Facebook, but it's pretty obvious that it's purpose built to
do specific things, and does them well, if that's what your Jonesing for.

~~~
reitanqild
> Uh, pretty obvious that Google Plus just wasn't a product that could stand
> on it's own merit.

Honest question: how was this obvious?

~~~
wonkaWonka
You could tell, open handed, that people would not be interested in the idea
of the product, by the way it was executed, by the undertones of its
justification for existence.

It was a product mandated for the sake of a company's bucket list at best. To
earn a gold star for trying. To mark off a checkbox.

The whole thing reeked of groupthink, from a mile away. Censored behavior.
Courting celebrities. Requiring real names. Activities restrained by pretense.
It stank of corporate influence, of lunchtime business meetings, of
shareholder concern. Poochie the dog, rastafied by 10% or so.

Nothing about it felt natural. Everyone has to wear clothes. No cursing
please. Place your cigarette in the appropriate receptacle.

Worse still, all things were clearly designed to funnel back into some other
thing at Google that was more impotant to the bottom line. Endorsements,
trending interests, who's reading what, written by who, and so forth.

It wasn't designed to tickle the user. None of that is why people come to the
internet and keep coming back. Not regular people.

You could tell that the people invloved in crafting the reason for Google
Plus' existence were people who pay their taxes. Who drive safely, even if
they drive expensive cars. Who spend their lives trapped inside a ribbed
condom. Yeah, it's a condom, but it's a _ribbed_ condom. _So_ much better!

Facebook is also guilty of many of these sins, but it's what they do, it's ALL
they do, and they don't get in the way of people behaving badly, or at least
not in ways that would preclude them from just trying to have fun on a website
they don't actually need to use. And that's where Google _really_ crossed the
line, by trying to needle people into jumping on the Google Plus bandwagon,
and then by telling them to sit all proper and cross-legged too.

------
erikpukinskis
I feel like the headline and intro to this piece are misleading. It doesn't
actually describe anything Zuck did product-wise, or how the fight actually
played out. It's just some anecdotes about what Facebook was like during this
period and a lot of pretty grand statements about Zuckerberg.

------
rwallace
When you're up against a strong incumbent, don't attack your opponent where he
is strongest, or at least don't do that in the opening game. Look for where he
is weak instead.

Google+ didn't lose because Facebook used any particular counter-attack. It
lost because it basically set out to copy Facebook, which constituted an
attack where Facebook was strongest; why would anyone use it when they could
use the original, which had more people on it? Google should have tried doing
something different. Maybe drop the real names policy, maybe allow open
programmatic access, I don't know enough about the domain to be able to say
for sure exactly what, but they needed to provide some reason for at least
some percentage of users to switch.

------
samwestdev
Are lockdown even legal in the US?

~~~
wmeredith
Eh, they probably can't legally make you stay, but they can certainly fire
your ass for leaving.

~~~
EpicEng
>Eh, they probably can't legally make you stay

I mean, they absolutely cannot. We have a term for that; it's called
'kidnapping'.

~~~
dragonwriter
Actually, its "false imprisonment". "Kidnapping" is different.

~~~
EpicEng
Depends on the state, but I don't think you're correct.

[https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-
instant&ion=1&e...](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-
instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=difference%20between%20false%20imprisonment%20and%20kidnapping)

------
michaelbuddy
Facebook didn't need to do much. Google Plus was frightfully annoying on its
own. It made no sense to people the on boarding process, to the point where
google plus made it easier to create new google plus accounts, people didn't
want, without their knowledge than it was to get help from google on anything.

------
puffpiece
Lots of flowery language and very little substance

~~~
antongm
From a guy with the username puffpiece, that's really amusing commentary.

------
amaks
"Google Circles, a way of organizing social contacts, shamelessly copied from
Facebook’s long-ignored Lists feature."

I thought it was the other way around - circles were based on a research by a
guy from Google, who left later for Facebook and they built similar feature.

~~~
nbm
Google+ launched in 2011. Friend lists were on Facebook in 2009:

[http://mashable.com/2009/10/09/create-facebook-friend-
lists/](http://mashable.com/2009/10/09/create-facebook-friend-lists/)

------
nibs
TL/DR: An interesting, adjective-heavy story about how Facebook and Zuckerburg
responded to the Google+ competitive threat between 2012-2014. Zuck likened it
to Roman conquering and Facebook went temporarily into "Lockdown" with seven
day workweeks. Anecdotes suggest Facebook worked Sundays more often than
Google. Otherwise pretty light on content.

~~~
dukoid
I really hate this kind of article. Good writing has a summary of the most
important stuff at the top and then drills down into various interesting
aspects. Thanks for the TL/DR, I had given up after the first paragraph.

~~~
HillaryBriss
I think you may be describing the difference between newspaper-style
journalism on the one hand and magazine-style journalism on the other.

That said, I pretty much agree with you. I've lost my patience for magazine-
style journalism.

------
tdkl
As many have said already G+ did the job on its own. But what's also important
was the crucial time at launch.

These were the days when the people coming to Facebook in 2008, 2009 were a
bit fed up by it and wanted to try something else with hosting pictures,
events etc. So they actually were the most interested in trying in out, hey it
was a Google product and everyone loved Gmail. But Google screwed up and
placed an invite system.

I don't know if they weren't prepared for the scale or wanted to copy Gmail
(it worked once, amirite!) or the Facebook being exclusive at their beginning.

The times were different though and if you slam the door before someone eager
to try out your stuff, guess what, he won't come back. So after couple months
when the invites were a bit more reachable, the initial interest was wasted
and left an aftertaste in people.

And you don't want that.

~~~
rezashirazian
Making a social media platform invite only was such an obvious mistake, I'm
surprised a company like Google made it. The product in G+ was not the
platform but the potential social element of it (the user's friends and
family).

"Hey here is an invite to this thing that none of your friends can get on"

------
areyoucrazy
This is cargo-culting. Do you really think FB's success is due to frequent
lockdowns? They are successful because they've got network effects, people are
used to using their site/app and there is no incentive for people to switch -
it's already free, you can't go lower than that.

~~~
onewaystreet
The network effects that Facebook enjoys today didn't just happen, how they
got there is the story.

~~~
areyoucrazy
They got there by people telling everyone around them to join (same with
WhatsApp, Snapchat etc.). Company just keepes the sites/apps running, but when
it comes to building network effects - that is something people do themselves.

------
draw_down
I can't imagine ever loving my employer this much. And heaven help whoever
tells me I'm on "lockdown" so I can't leave the building and I have to work
weekends.

~~~
ryanSrich
Facebook is notorious for this. It is 100% a legitimate cult. Don't worry
about wondering if someone works at Facebook or not. They'll be sure to tell
you.

~~~
fishnchips
I went from G to FB (which I left shortly afterwards) and I can tell you that
FB isn't anywhere near as close to being a cult as G is. Not hearing the word
'googley' 10x a day was alone a substantial improvement.

~~~
ljlolel
It's funny you proved ryanSrich's point, but then again I worked at FB.

~~~
fishnchips
Oh my, at least I didn't leave anyone wondering ;)

------
KingNoosh
Was it really a war? I don't believe anyone thought Google Plus would've
actually stood a chance, and now it looks like G+ is splitting to many little
micro-services such as spaces, Allo and Duo.

Not the mention the whole YouTube users being constantly harassed to input
their real name which gave G+ an even worse taste in their mouths.

~~~
whack
Yes, it was a war. There were plenty of earlier social networks, like
Friendster and Myspace, who probably looked down at upstarts like Facebook,
shortly before getting killed by them. Facebook was in a good position, but it
certainly wasn't invincible.

And Google isn't just any competitor. This was back in the days when Google
could do no wrong. They conquered the world in search. They conquered the
world in email. They were starting to conquer the world in mobile. They had
some of the best engineering talent in the world. And they were now pointing
all their guns at Facebook. I can certainly imagine why Zuck was shitting
bricks. Kudos to him for pulling out a win.

~~~
gdulli
I'm not sure, but my instinct is that Google's decline had started by then.
Sure, they bought their way into email by giving away storage when everyone
else was charging for it. But the usability had steadily gotten worse over
time. When did the new compose experience launch compared to G+, for example?

------
notifier2050
Omg, link to Vanity Fair on HN...

~~~
danso
Huh? Vanity Fair is a frequent source of important and interesting
journalism...they've been writing a lot recently about the tech scene, but
have also had classics such as:
[http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/1996/05/wigand199605](http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/1996/05/wigand199605)

