
Nonplussed - pearjuice
http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/10/nonplussed/
======
spodek
Experiences like this led me to leave Facebook, then LinkedIn, a while ago. I
haven't deleted my Google+ account only because laziness and fear of an
experience like the article's author prevent me from going to the site. People
describe leaving as trendy, as if leaving had something to do with other
people as opposed to the sites' own repellent behavior. For me leaving was
easy and fun -- [http://joshuaspodek.com/leaving-facebook-easy-and-
fun](http://joshuaspodek.com/leaving-facebook-easy-and-fun). Experience has
unequivocally shown me my life is better without them.

I have a feeling the market forces forcing Google, Facebook, et al into an
arms race after your privacy and personal life will motivate people to leave
more and more in favor of small players that do one thing well.

I expect people here will see the writing on the wall first that the sooner
you get out the better. Yes, social networks have benefits, but they have
costs too.

Deleting Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc accounts improves your life.
Deleting them earlier improves your life earlier.

~~~
VLM
"Experiences like this led me to leave Facebook"

I would go on a tangent to this, that I never got any actionable information
or other life improvement from facebook. I tried, really hard, for six months,
to participate and get something out of it, but it was just a huge time waster
so I wiped it.

Although supposedly youtube is only (or mostly) used for trash talking
comments on kitten videos, I have occasionally gotten actual useful data and
experiences from youtube. Programming screencasts and the like. Also the
videos I watch and comment on are of a professional-ish level I like being
associated with.

So I'm finding the outrage hard to generate. If the whole world finds out my
real name liked a university video lecture about simulating a vibrating 2-D
plane using multiple stack computers solving differential eqs instantiated on
a FPGA as a lab exercise at Columbia, well, I'm not going to ragequit youtube
over it. In fact I think thats just great.

Its their property; if they want to drastically change its culture (to
something I happen to prefer) its hard for me to feel bad about it. There was
a cheesy falling apart barn nearby the Interstate not too far from where I
live. The new owners painted it; outrage from traditionalists who would rather
see it torn down than painted. What do I care, other than I happen to like the
new paint job? If the complainers don't like it, they can put up their own
antique barn and let it decay unpainted, or they could have bought the old
barn.

The original author didn't like that the rabbit bathing video site decided to
dump him, so shout out, you can't dump me because I'm dumping you first. Well
all this high school dating drama is amusing for me to watch, but I have a
FPGA video to get back to watching. And if someone finds out, that's OK with
me.

Unlike facebook, youtube can demand a fair trade because its content is
actually worth something. OK here's my real name, now let me watch something
useful.

This might be the end of youtube as we know it, as a complete waste of time, I
mean. It doesn't mean the end of the site.

~~~
gcb1
but you have option. like that fancy pants academic video? nice. thumbed up a
silly cat video just to show someone later on your phone? too bad. its there
now too.

~~~
philwelch
It's very hard for me to imagine someone who wants to try so very hard to
maintain a serious public image that they won't be caught liking a silly cat
video on YouTube. That seems hilariously self-important.

~~~
lsc
>It's very hard for me to imagine someone who wants to try so very hard to
maintain a serious public image that they won't be caught liking a silly cat
video on YouTube. That seems hilariously self-important.

Eh, I think this idea that we must live our whole life in public (to the
/same/ public using the /same/ identity) is a bit insidious. Especially in
these days of "cultural fit" \- it leads to this idea that you need to spend
your private life in service of your professional life.

If you have an unpopular hobby or sexual proclivity, keeping that out of your
professional life, in many circles, could be even seen as polite; At the
office? nobody wants to know about your love for furry fan-fiction.

Sure, cute cat videos are different from furry fan fiction, but... if I'm
"following" you? I will "unfollow" if there are a bunch of cute cat videos. I
mean, unless I'm following you for your great taste in cute cat videos. More
to the point, if I'm evaluating you and, say, your long screeds advocating a
political cause I find particularly distasteful keep coming up, I might have a
hard time evaluating you rationally, on your skills. (Also, if I'm hiring you,
I want you to be able to leave the bullshit at home. Leaving the bullshit in
another identity helps with that sort of thing.)

I really think that multiple identities is the solution. You can have your
cute cat picture identity, your furry fan-fiction identity, your radical
socialist identity, and your professional programmer identity. I can choose to
follow the identity I find interesting. I mean, yeah, if someone /really
wants/ to connect your furry fan-fiction identity to your professional
programmer identity, they can. However, if you practice proper identity
hygiene, it becomes much easier for me (or another third party) to interact
with the professional programmer, without dealing with your hobbies I have no
interest in, or maybe even find distasteful.

Most of the "real name" folks seem to think that by making everything public,
we will see that we are all weirdos, and become more accepting of our
differences.

I guess that's my prime problem with the 'real name' folks; _I_ think that
it's just fine to do business with, or even relate socially to folks that have
hobbies or political views that I believe are downright wrong. I don't think
that 'acceptance' is required for that. I think that you can like and trust
one facet of a person's personality, without liking other facets of their
personality.

I want to be able to say "I think this person is a great programmer" without
implying that I also endorse their badly written Spock/Kirk slash fiction, or
their half-baked anarcho-capitalist political rants.

~~~
tiziano88
but then why do you "like" or "+1" the cat videos in the first place, if not
to make it known to the world that you liked them?

~~~
lsc
>but then why do you "like" or "+1" the cat videos in the first place, if not
to make it known to the world that you liked them?

My point is that I may have 'cat video friends' who, you know, are in to that
sort of thing, with whom I may wish to share these sorts of things.

My point is that while it's fine to have my cat video friends, I ought to have
the option of not sharing my 'cat fancy' with other groups who may look down
on that sort of thing.

~~~
tiziano88
well then it looks like you are not looking for the +1 button, but for
something more complicated than that, an ACL'd endorsement of sorts. Right now
the closest thing to that is to just reshare the video to your 'cat video
friends' circle :)

------
itafroma
I am mostly for the ostensible cleaning up of YouTube comments, but what got
me was that any time you share a YouTube video on Google+ proper or comment in
a thread where someone shared a YouTube video, it automatically cross-posts
what you said back to the comments underneath the video on YouTube. And that's
not just for shares/comments going forward: it's everything you've ever shared
publicly, ever. I'm now getting inane YouTube-level comments on stuff I shared
months ago because I happened to share a popular YouTube video on Google+.

As part of the rare breed of people actually using Google+ proper, it's really
turned me off from the whole thing. Even though I shared YouTube videos
publicly and commented on publicly-viewable Google+ posts with YouTube videos,
I intended to only post my comments and shares _on_ Google+, not syndicated
everywhere at a later date without additional consent[1] and especially not
the cesspool that is the YouTube comment section. I don't really understand
why anyone thought that'd be okay. And anecdote isn't data, but talking to
other Google+ users I know, nobody seemed to be aware that this was going to
happen: they all just thought the identities would be merged, but if you post
on Google+, it'd stay on Google+.

[1]: I'm aware that there's probably some clause in their privacy policy that
gave them the legal ability to do this, but Google is usually pretty decent
when it comes to informing of changes to privacy/visibility options.

~~~
stephp
Ugh. This was my problem with Google+ too. Everything you do ripples out into
the rest of the internet in a creepy way.

When I was freelancing, I emailed back and forth with potential clients
through the Gmail interface. One day I saw this party pic of a 20-something
girl with beer in hand, identified by the full name of a receptionist I had
emailed with professionally but never actually met. It was a suggestion from
Google to connect with her on Google+, which I'm sure she'd have been
mortified by. I deleted my account that day.

~~~
saidajigumi
This and TFA hit to the heart of the problem with Google+: Google has
willfully refused to acknowledge or understand that singular humans have
multiple personas, and that we do not and cannot allow those to mix. Your
professional face is not the same as your close-family personal face is not
the same as your secret webcomic artist handle is not ... you get the idea.

There are so many mundane variations on that theme, and then there are very
serious ones: those seeking support for addiction, as survivors of abuse, or
other situations that have social stigma or personal risk attached to them.
Some needs are simply _private_ in that way a vulnerable person needs secure
anonymity lest the public light itself become a chilling effect, of which
health concerns are a common example.

The architecture of Google+ is such that it is inherently inhuman in its
disregard for privacy and for applying different "pen names" to the various
situations of life.

~~~
rodgerd
> Google has willfully refused to acknowledge or understand that singular
> humans have multiple personas, and that we do not and cannot allow those to
> mix.

They may not acknowledge it, but they certainly understand it. The whole value
proposition of Circles was initially that'd you'd only share what you want
with who you want.

~~~
saidajigumi
Agreed. When G+ first hit the scene, before Google's big push to own and
publish the unified identity for every physical human, Circles looked like a
promising experiment. A lot of people I know who were fed up with Facebook
started exploring Google+ because of that.

Then Google changed directions entirely (along with the big management shakeup
that flipped Google from a bottom-up org to a top-down org) and those ideas
were effectively killed. And every single person I knew who'd been toying with
G+ dropped it like a hot potato.

~~~
haberman
Please explain how the idea of circles has been killed.

I just went to the YouTube comment box, and right there is the control for
what circles to publish to:
[http://imgur.com/3ZEB9Th](http://imgur.com/3ZEB9Th)

~~~
daliusd
The main problem for me that in different circles I might have different
persona (different name, different image, some parts of my identity not
exposed - like my workplace). It is mask I wear is important not who I'm
talking to.

~~~
haberman
G+ lets you control what circles can see your employment info:
[http://imgur.com/nuBP0Qz](http://imgur.com/nuBP0Qz)

Personally I much prefer that G+ (and Facebook, for that matter) lets you
interact with real people and not personas.

~~~
daliusd
The problem is that in reality you have different faces: coworker, father,
lover and etc. Neither of these are less real and many of them not necessary
has real name, you can be "Your Name" (without surname) for your coworker,
"Daddy" for your child and "Honey" for your lover.

I just try to explain why Google+ does not work for me at all.

------
chimeracoder
I wonder how much engagement Google/Facebook/et. al. lose from people who are
about to make a comment/post a status/etc., and then thing 'Hm, no - this is
private now, but what about in a year when they automatically change my
privacy settings without asking me?'

Put another way, imagine I am a teenager or college student who uses Facebook.

1\. Start to upload a photo from my phone of me and my friends doing shots

2\. Try to figure out how (on my phone!) to set privacy settings so that my
younger brother (who is my Facebook friend) and my parents (who aren't, but
use the Internet and sometimes Google my name) can't see it.

3\. Remember that Facebook has a history of "expanding" privacy settings
retroactively

4\. Think "Ah, fuck it", and send a Snapchat to my friends instead.

In reality it's probably not that common right now, but hopefully that may
increase in the future. You can only pull the rug out from under your users so
many times before learn to walk along another path.

~~~
Lewisham
I don't really want to dive into this conversation in any real depth, but I do
want to point out that Google+, with old features or new, has never violated
the ACLs that users set. If you set something to private, it remains private
forever.

To do otherwise would be corporate suicide.

Disclaimer: I work for Google, but not on G+.

~~~
chimeracoder
> I do want to point out that Google+, with old features or new, has never
> violated the ACLs that users set. If you set something to private, it
> remains private forever.

I know that, which is why I used the example of Facebook.

However, Google+ _does_ make it incredibly easy to leak information that I
would otherwise consider private accidentally.

For example, I can't use Google+ with my primary email address, as it's a
Google+ account. However, because it's linked with my Gmail account (which
does have a Google+ account), some people who have added me on Google+ have
been able to figure out my Gmail address (which I haven't used for email
purposes in years[0]).

I can imagine all the technical reasons for this, but that doesn't change the
fact that it feels a bit wrong for a service to hand out my old email address
(which I never give out anymore) to people I've met recently and who have
added me on Google+ _using my current email address_.

Imagine your Google+ email address is something that you can't change, but
don't really want people to see anymore - this isn't uncommon; it appeared in
a New York Times piece just yesterday, in the context of college
admissions[1]. Thankfully, my personal email address is much more tame than
that student's, but that still doesn't mean I want anybody to know or use it
nowadays.

Furthermore, it's incredibly easy to sign up "accidentally" to use Youtube
with Google+ and your "real name" instead of continuing to use your pseudonym.

As for the distinction you point out - I know the difference, and you know the
difference. But most users don't.

> To do otherwise would be corporate suicide.

Apparently not _completely_ \- Facebook's gotten away with it for _years_![2]

[0] This may have been fixed, since it was a while ago that I last noticed,
but it was still the case for quite a while.

I would have to go through my inbox to remember the details of why this
happened - I remember debugging and tracking it down. But the fact that it
took that much effort to discover why my new acquaintances suddenly knew my
old (personal) email address, and that I can't remember anymore, speaks
volumes as to how easy it would be for a less savvy user to accidentally leak
information that they wanted to keep private.

[1][http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/business/they-loved-
your-g...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/business/they-loved-your-gpa-
then-they-saw-your-tweets.html?_r=0)

[2] [http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/](http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-
privacy/) \- this graph doesn't distinguish clearly between those which were
automatically retroactive and those which weren't, but that's a topic that's
been well-reported and is easy to search for.

~~~
Lewisham
I'm honestly not sure how your email address would be leaked, vanity URLs are
name-based and at least one of the reasons Plus uses ID strings was in order
to prevent leaking any account details through the URL. I'm sorry that other
people are figuring it out, that sucks. If you remember what happened and
think that G+ has had a hand in the leakage, please feel free to ping me (my
URL is in my profile) and I'll try to follow it up.

 _Personally_ I do feel that G+ has done a good job at communicating to users
the privacy they do and don't have, as the ACLs were baked in at the
beginning. I think users have had the possibility to be confused when data is
being used outside the [http://plus.google.com](http://plus.google.com)
domain, like Shared Endorsements and the YouTube comments, as this opens up
the worry ACLs are being violated. I think there's more work that can be done
to communicate that this hasn't happened, such as putting the "Shared
(publicly|privately)" on YouTube comments so you can see why those are there.

~~~
chimeracoder
> If you remember what happened and think that G+ has had a hand in the
> leakage, please feel free to ping me (my URL is in my profile) and I'll try
> to follow it up

Thanks for the offer - I really appreciate it. I think it had something to do
with group contacts in Gmail, but I can't remember. If I have some time today
I might take a look.

To clarify: I'm not exactly mad at Google in this case, because I'm a
developer and I know how tricky it can be to get these things right even in
small, standalone products[0]. And unlike some people on HackerNews, I don't
think this is a result of bad intentions. It's just that, every time I see
something like this happen (beagle3 points out the example of Buzz below), I
can't help but notice that users' trust is both fragile (easily broken) and
unforgiving (no benefit of the doubt).

These things are tough to get right, but they're very critical for the _long_
-term success of a product.

[0] Also, the consequences for me happened to be pretty mild, thankfully.

~~~
rhizome
It sounds like it was a failure of design.

~~~
emn13
Then perhaps they shouldn't have taken the design into use until it was...
usable. And it's really more than merely design in any case, it's at least a
pretty core piece of underlying philosophy - connect everything to G+.

It's one thing to do this if you're a new service, with users that don't have
all kinds of baggage with you - if your UI isn't great they can choose to
accept it for the value you offer or reject it. But existing users it's almost
a kind of fraud - you convince em to join under a false pretense but then
change the rules half way.

------
petercooper
_It’s not that I find Google or even Google+ itself bad. But the connections
between the account, the Google+ profile, the Google profile, the various
websites and contact lists_

This is totally it for me. I have a few Google accounts (an 'original' one and
two Apps For Your Domain ones for e-mail and work) and it seems Google has
made Plus accounts for each and I have things spread around them all. I've
seen stories where people tried to "merge" accounts and ended up losing access
to their mail, etc.. so rocking the boat doesn't seem worth it to me.

I don't mind Google's (usually great) services but it's the _binding together_
that makes me wary.

~~~
seiji
How do we reconcile Google Only Hires Geniuses with their executional
incompetence across multiple (dozens of?) products?

Is it a pride of ego fallacy? They think they are the best and they can do no
wrong, so they just keep doing things without thinking results through?

Too many logical programmers trying to have input on end users/UI/UX decisions
where visuals and emotions are more important?

Too many 24 year old bro managers running around trying to make a name for
themselves by manipulating people in flashy ways instead of quietly making the
world a better place?

~~~
scholia
I agree with the sentiments, but most Google products worked better when they
were done by logical programmers. They've all got much less usable since the
fancy UI designers came in and screwed them up.

~~~
jlgreco
> _They 've all got much less usable since the fancy UI designers came in and
> screwed them up._

See also, the decline of GNOME. This isn't a problem unique to Google.

~~~
scholia
True. See also: The New Yahoo...

~~~
Hellenion
And apperantly Win8 too.

------
kmfrk
As someone who likes to avoid posting too much incriminating information on
social network, I think the main problem of this trend is that the Internet is
turning into No Country for Lurkers.

I can't even _favourite_ nor _like_ a video on YouTube anymore without being
subjected to the whole carrousel of signing up for G+. I get the impression
that there's some asshole at companies like Google creating a Markov chain for
bumping head-first into a registration wall for the most _inane_ lurker
actions.

And this is not to mention the absolutely awful situation of being locked out
of my own list of favourites, because I am now required to sign up for G+ to
export them.

Don't you love the Silicon Valley CEOs who say they want to index the world's
information and allow everyone to share it - except this is becoming
increasingly impossible on their own platforms such as Facebook, Google, and
Quora.

I get that companies have to make money, but I think the companies' business
models are perfectly aligned with their personal philosophies.

~~~
a3n
> I can't even favourite nor like a video on YouTube anymore without being
> subjected to the whole carrousel of signing up for G+.

But you can bookmark. Or does that not make sense on a phone? My galaxy has
been in my sock drawer for a couple years now, I forget.

~~~
kmfrk
After I signed up on Pinboard, I've taken to save my bookmarks there instead.
Still, an IFTTT script that saves to Pinboard, whenever I favourite on YouTube
would be less annoying and also allow me to have my favourites on YouTube.

~~~
a3n
I use pinboard too, _great_ service.

------
venomsnake
Google has really lost its way to do UX. Google plus and youtube are not the
one ones.

I have no permanent way to disable Youtube asking me to merge accounts except
goat sacrifice and writing directly to Larry Page - "If I rejected you 25 time
why do you think I will agree on the 26th"

I had to use Google Maps yesterday - the mobile app. Few things of notice -
scale was never given on screen. Also there was not a way by which you could
measure the distance between two points.

There are numerous inconsistencies between their products - why is google keep
hidden when you are at drive google.com and on and on and on.

I think that this could be case of either no dogfooding or extreme dogfooding
- either no one at google uses their own services or they use only google ones
and have forgotten that people in the outside world are not so invested in the
google ecosystem.

~~~
MichaelGG
It seems unlikely that this is by accident and that people at Google are not
aware of how annoying it is.

Perhaps, just perhaps, they've decided they will make more money by forcing
people to use G+. I see plenty of comments on YouTube, still of YT quality,
with "Real Names". It's not like there's really a useful alternative to YT for
most people. Google gets nothing from people commenting anonymously on YT.
Annoying those people is no big loss - they won't stop visiting YT to consume.
And for those that sign up with G+, they'll eventually gain more money from
advertising.

This whole attitude that this is sheer UX incompetence is moronic.

(Now, with respect to the whole accounts management stuff and Google Apps and
what not, that seems like technical issues.)

~~~
warcode
This would be fine if they actually provided a "I never want to comment. Never
link my G+ and Youtube Accounts." option. But they keep asking forever.

~~~
MichaelGG
How is it in their interests to provide a "I never want to link" option? They
keep asking forever because they know that'll increase conversion ratios.

If people start leaving for an alternative service, then they might care. And
who could launch an alternative? Yahoo? Microsoft? MS tried and bungled it
like crazy (like everything MSN.)

------
jurassic
> You know what? Forget it, I don’t even want to comment any more. It was a
> dumb video anyway.

I went through this exact process and thought ("screw this, ugh!") several
times before I just decided to stop hanging out on youtube and commenting on
peoples' videos. I used to waste a huge amount of time doing this, but now I
only sometimes watch things that others have discovered and shared with me. I
don't comment or browse like I used to, and I'm sure their advertising revenue
off of me has dropped off a cliff.

It also seems like the amount of intrusive/unskippable advertising has
rocketed up, too, over the last couple of years while they were forcing G+ on
the world. They're kidding themselves if they think I'm going to happily watch
a 30 second ad before a 2 minute viral video.

I was annoyed/sad at first when they started making these changes, but now I
realize I was mostly wasting my time doing that stuff anyway. So thanks,
Google, for making your site less fun to use; it really has saved me a lot of
time.

~~~
amaks
My though exactly. Perhaps the anger and frustration of this integration is
rooted from people being upset about being more accountable (through the real
identity) and cautious, and Google is simply improving the quality of comments
this way?

------
devindotcom
Hey all. I'm the author. I don't really have much to add here except that I
was afraid the article, which I dashed off as all that stuff was happening,
would come off as whiny. Hope that isn't the case. Thanks for reading and
linking.

~~~
logn
Thanks for the tip on blocking youtube.com cookies. Never thought of that.

~~~
devindotcom
I added it after reading it in another thread here the other day, would give
credit if I remembered who mentioned it.

------
lobster_johnson
I feel the pain. Just this week I deleted my Google+ account, or profile, or
whatever it is. I never used G+ after initially signing up, so I had no use
for it.

Deleting the account seems to have had no ill effects. The deletion page did
warn me that "third party sign on" would stop working, and I do use the Google
third party login via OAuth because some sites rely on it, but nothing broke.
Is there some kind of different "login with G+"?

I also moved calendaring and reminders to Fruux [1], and I have previously
moved my email and contacts to Fastmail, and my notes to Evernote. I'm still
on GTalk via Adium, though -- is there a good replacement for that?

Moving away from the big provides _feels_ good. It feels liberating, in fact.
Google and Apple provide whole ecosystems of services, and they really, really
want you to buy into their whole integrated system, and they design their
systems to stretch their tendrils as far into your computing experience as
possible.

At least with Apple that's core to their long-established philosophy --
integrated devices that just work -- but I'm a big believer in
decentralization. I want to pick the best possible system that integrates with
everything using open standards.

[1] [https://fruux.com](https://fruux.com)

[2] [https://www.fastmail.fm/](https://www.fastmail.fm/)

------
Bahamut
I'm probably in the minority here, but I'm all for this change, largely
because of the crappy anonymous comments you see out there on YouTube, which
was the point of this transition in the first place.

However, forcing Google+ onto people does have me wary as well. I don't mind
using Google+, but it seems like Google's way to slowly worm their way into
people using its social component. I admittedly am not sure why it affects me,
but something about that does rub me the wrong way (although not enough to
ditch using Google services). It's not quite insidious, but it does feel like
it gives off the vibe that we are the product, even more than usual.

~~~
oceanplexian
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to
say it."

Anonymous Youtube comments suck, but anonymity enables people to express
unpopular opinions. The real problem is tyranny of the majority. Attaching
real names does absolutely nothing to solve the problem.

Google should be smart enough to build a proper moderation system and retain
anonymity.

~~~
VLM
"The real problem is tyranny of the majority."

Tyranny of the minority, you mean. 50%+ of internet users are not racist
trolls, for example. I suspect 50%+ of anonymous commenters are, at least in
mass market sites without any Karma type system... like youtube.

I'm not seeing the problem in realigning global traffic such that 4chan and
reddit get more troll traffic and youtube gets less.

------
bobbles
To remove your Google+ account but keep your Google services running, visit
the following link:

[https://plus.google.com/downgrade/](https://plus.google.com/downgrade/)

To remove your Google+ account from YouTube:

Go to youtube settings:
[http://www.youtube.com/account](http://www.youtube.com/account)

Click "Return name to <name>, and disconnect Google+ profile"

I was an early adopter to Google+ but screw it, I'm sick of dealing with this
crap.

------
Havoc
I've had it with the whole online social thing to be honest - it seems to lead
to nothing but evil deceptive tactics like the dialog box in the article with
only one option. The internet used to be fun...now I get the distinct
impression that everyone is out to get me.

~~~
fumar
What can be done to reverse this trend? Or to create something altogether
different from the current "internet"?

~~~
Havoc
Personally I think it can't be reversed. Its too profitable and there are too
many sheeple out there.

As for something "altogether different". I don't see it happening. There are
just too many powerful vested interest at work. e.g. We can't even get a HTML
standard pushed through without DRM.

This might sound cynical, but personally I feel its the end of an era. The
internet used to be the wild west where anything is possible. Now its become a
commercial turkey shoot via dark patterns, micro-transactions, data mining and
a dozen other buzzwords.

~~~
a3n
> Personally I think it can't be reversed. Its too profitable and there are
> too many sheeple out there.

The "internet," i.e. TCP/IP, is still there pretty much as it always was.
Google's interface is almost all web on top of the internet, Facebook too.

Anyone is free to use anything else implemented on the internet. Fastmail
makes a handy living at implementing smtp and imap on top of TCP/IP; their
value is excellent implementation along with _service_.

It's always possible to sell good service.

You don't have to use the DRM parts.

And I agree, it is the end of an era, a really good era. But it's not the end.

~~~
Havoc
> The "internet," i.e. TCP/IP, is still there pretty much as it always was.

That might be true to you & me, but to the masses the internet is google,
facebook, twitter etc.

Yes you can build anything on it, but can you compete against an opponent that
is bigger, more powerful, has networking effects on its side and is more
willing to use questionable tactics? Service goes a long way, but it doesn't
scale well and its not enough against those odds (imo).

>Anyone is free to use anything else implemented on the internet.

Are they? Its not really about what you are free to use, but more about what
you can skip. See the author in the article...does he sound like he is free to
_not_ use G+? Plus there are powerful networking effects at play...I never
wanted a FB account but my friends kept bugging me about it. In a practical
scenario users have very little freedom to do what they want & it only gets
worse if they're technically illiterate.

------
kunai
I was going to use Google Code for hosting my projects, but, after this
fiasco, I think I'll just use Github instead.

Hey, at least I'll get to use a DVCS. :P

In all honesty, though, while this won't hurt Google right now, it's going to
come back and bite them in the rear end soon enough. If they keep making these
kinds of changes, what's next? Having to sign in to Google+ to use Android? A
Google+ feed on the Chrome OS deskop? Requirements for Google+ account with
"Developer Privileges" to download Go?

Again, this doesn't matter much now, but it's going to hurt them later. It
happens to the best of everyone: Microsoft. Apple. Google.

~~~
rogerbinns
I do both Google Code and Github. GC feels unmaintained these days, and there
is no option for paid/private repositories. GC is also removing their download
service - Github did the same but then later provided "releases"
functionality.

Github's issue tracker is terrible (try to prioritise things) while GC is a
lot better.

The one thing GC does really well is they let you have multiple repositories
per project. This means you can have an Android repository, a server
repository, a web site repository etc and they can all be on the same page
using the same issue tracker, wiki etc. I've asked Github to implement this
but they aren't interested. When each repo has its own wiki, issue tracker,
releases etc it is far too painful (eg you can't move tickets between
projects).

That also helps for documentation. My projects have extensive generated
documentation. With github you have to dump that into a branch, and put
generated content into a source code control system is not a good idea. With
GC you can just created another repository and put the generated doc there.

I personally prefer Mercurial over git, but that isn't a realistic choice with
github.

On the whole, while GC has some nice things, I doubt it has much of a future.
I wish github would pick up the multiple repositories thing.

~~~
blt
Out of curiosity, why would you prefer having multiple repos over a few top-
level directories in one repo?

~~~
rogerbinns
Because they are completely unrelated code bases sharing nothing. With
subversion you could check out subtrees but that isn't practical with git.

For my personal projects a common pattern is a repo for the source and a repo
for generated documentation.

For work projects we have an Android client (in Java), iOS client (in
objective C), 3 different server components that share no code (Python),
various analysis tools (Python), a client customisation layer (mini-Python),
our website etc.

If all those were in one large repository it would be a huge sprawling mess.
Also remember that branches are repository global. There would also be
constant updates because other parts have changed, nothing to do with the
component you are working on.

------
hackaflocka
It's okay folks, Google is only doing what umpteen companies before it have
done -- like a good citizen of the tech ecosphere it is paving the way for the
next great company.

------
jenius
I may be mistaken, but I think the entire point of this recent change was to
force people to use their real names and faces rather than commenting
anonymously (due to the fact that youtube comment sections are typically the
worst things ever), and if so it seems like google has actually achieved it's
goal.

Now, whether it's a good decision to make it difficult/impossible to
anonymously comment on youtube videos is an entirely separate discussion that
I'm not taking a side on (yet), but I'd be interested in seeing a discussion
about that here.

~~~
fiblye
I see "improving comment quality" as the public excuse they use to keep you
logged in to one universal account to make tracking you for advertising
purposes easier. Binding this to a G+ account allows them to report that they
have record-breaking activity on G+ every month, because everybody is
technically forced to be logged into G+ to do any-goddamn-thing, and so it
makes G+ seem like some tremendous success and makes more people "want" to use
it.

The problem is that annoying the user doesn't really make them want to use it
more. I thought G+ might've had potential at first, but seeing all the
desperate crap that Google's pulled over the past few months has not only
pushed me away from G+, but Google as a whole.

Besides, did anybody really care about the quality of youtube comments? Nobody
ever read them with the expectation of gaining any sort of insight or
knowledge. Even if this change does affect youtube comment quality, it won't
change anybody's expectations of the comments. The only shift will be from
"this video is totes retarded" to "this video is stupid."

~~~
BrandonRead
Thank you for this! Seriously, I try and explain to people that the reason for
conglomerating every service into one is to tell tales of high G+ user-base
for greater ad revenue. It's like boasting about how Android has the largest
phone deployment, while the UX and satisfaction of iOS far outweighs Android's
ecosystem (no bias either way). Everything is turning into a big numbers sham
with no care for the intelligence and technical navigational experience of
user.

------
saiko-chriskun
Again, am I really the only one here that doesn't care about all this? :P

~~~
andybak
No. Me too. I sometimes feel like I should - defending privacy is like
maintaining herd immunity - it only works if we all do it. But I don't
especially care. I don't love Google+ but I find it easy to ignore. Easier to
ignore than Facebook mainly due to the fact that no-one tries to interact with
me socially on it.

But the only places I really post are here and Reddit. I email stuff to close
friends and occasionally use Facebook when I'm invited to an event but that's
about the limit of my use of social media.

In general - I'm quite happy to be logged into Google across all services. It
makes Google Now slightly more useful and I can happily ignore all the parts
of it that don't interest me.

And advertisers are welcome to profile me to their heart's content - they just
don't seem to be very good at it. I've never clicked on a targeted ad so it's
seems a lot of effort to no real effect.

------
josteink
For those who consider deleting their G+ accounts:

Don't consider it if you're using Android, as some core apps will stop working
then (like the photo-gallery).

Yup. It has come to this. Disable or delete your G+ account and your Android
phone no longer works.

Google is getting pretty damn creepy. I sure hope the CM-team can come up with
some decent replacement apps for all the stuff Google is fucking up these
days.

~~~
iamshs
Damn it. I have a Nexus 5 pre-ordered. Well.

Unrelated: [http://i.imgur.com/wbjCmbt.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/wbjCmbt.jpg)

Changing faces of Google is a scary phenomenon.

------
grandalf
The "real name" movement is an attempt to turn internet behavior into
something more like a credit score.

~~~
Joona
Thankfully they don't require proof of your name, or I wouldn't be called Kim
Jong-Un.

~~~
krapp
>Thankfully they don't require proof of your name

... yet.

------
DigitalSea
I cannot agree with the sentiment of this article enough. The dropdown in my
Youtube shows 3 different accounts. One using my personal email address and
then another two which were created channels with the same name. One is linked
to my Google+ account (my main one) and the other for some reason is linked to
another Google+ account Google created for me. That's 3 different Google+
profiles created for the one email. This is a joke.

------
kmfrk
I'm leery enough about commenting on different sites that use Disqus as it is.

------
kamme
The people at Google are really pushing for broad adoption of G+. If you think
about it, it's pretty logical as they know Facebook is only going downhill and
they are trying to get everybody onboard. The reaction I'm hearing a lot
however, is they are being too pushy.

I've even had a few people who accidentally signed up for a G+ account ask me
how to delete it because they kept receiving 'Top X posts on G+' mails without
knowing what it is. I don't think a lot of good things come with this kind of
tactic.

------
mattmcknight
It would be better to just drop YouTube comments. They are a usually a
cesspool of flamewars that add little value to the content.

------
scholia
Petitioning Google Google: Change the Youtube comment section back to its
original form.

[http://www.change.org/petitions/google-change-the-youtube-
co...](http://www.change.org/petitions/google-change-the-youtube-comment-
section-back-to-its-original-form)

Stands at 80,445 supporters now.

~~~
kunai
I signed it, but it won't change anything. Either way, Google has a right to
refuse, and even if they don't, it doesn't automatically mean we're saved.
Google will continue to integrate Google+ with many of their other products.

------
wambotron
At one point he says he wants to comment as something else so no one sees him
comment, then he says he'll post it to facebook so everyone he knows sees his
comment.

I'm not going to comment on anything else in the article, this just struck me
as odd and obviously contradictory.

------
BadassFractal
I've been trying to figure out how to delete Google+ for a while, without
accidentally nuking some of the other services such as Picasa etc. Heard of
folks losing a bunch of data (Youtube videos?) when they remove their G+
accounts, so that's a huge bummer.

Perhaps it's time to move on from Google Photos, flickr maybe? I don't want
another social network.

~~~
judk
Yahoo/Flickr/Tumblr is moving full steam ahead into Yahoo social network,
completely ignoring why people still cling to them.

~~~
BadassFractal
Sigh, there's no way out huh?

~~~
mkr-hn
Maybe Amazon will come out with a social network and a YouTube competitor. You
can barely tell they own IMDB, and they seem content to stick with a policy of
non-interference.

------
barrkel
Ever since Google Reader was discontinued, I no longer log in under my real
account on my primary browser any more (I don't use Gmail's web interface
either).

Frankly I think that's the way to go. Ideally, we'd have better identity
support in our browsers to control which set of cookies to hand out based on
which top-level URL we're visiting.

------
danso
The OP makes a good point. But I can't be the only one who wants to watch that
bunny video now. Since you're using their work to make your blog post more
visually compelling, why not actually link to it?

Here it is:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_J0AMPPD34](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_J0AMPPD34)

------
davidgerard
Keep a separate Gmail/Google/G+ account for your phone and your desktop. If
you want to get to your desktop email from your phone, Firefox for Android is
less leaky than Chrome.

------
xacaxulu
Don't build your life on other peoples digital plantations.

------
amaks
"Now there’s one less egg in my Google basket, and I never have to pay
attention to anything that has the word “Google+” in it again — just like I
did with LinkedIn (stop inviting me, everyone in the world), Pinterest, and a
number of other things I had no use for."

Enough said. The dude is a typical Facebook user who is addicted to his only
social network and upset about integration between YouTube and G+. Better
commenting system and difficulty of creating fake user accounts will increase
the quality of comments. I guess the people who complain like to troll or post
some obnoxious comments, this explains the frustration.

~~~
jondr
Disclaimer: This is my first comment on HackerNews and probably my last. I'm
not a hacker or a software engineer and don't really belong on the site, so
don't comment. I'm just some random guy who plays a lot of video games, uses a
lot of reddit and has a rough interest in the technology industry. By
extension, I watch a lot of YouTube videos from various channels that offer
playthroughs (or 'Let's Plays') of games. This is why I say the following:

Unfortunately at this stage I think you are completely wrong. I suspect that
you don't use YouTube very much and so are not seeing what has happened. I'm
sorry if this sounds snide, it isn't meant to.

YouTube had a reputation with some as providing the worst internet comments
outside 4chan. I doubt few could imagine it getting worse. This recent Google+
integration seems to be an experiment on Google's part to prove how naive that
belief was.

You can now post hyperlinks in comments. This has led to people spamming links
to 'screamer' videos, including the potential to disguise these links as the
comment expanding feature. Comments can now have seemingly unlimited length,
or at least are massively extended compared to the previous system; This has
led to people spamming ASCII art images of genitals, pedobear, naked women,
memes like the super shibe 'doge', and reams and reams of repeating text like
"#FUCKGOOGLE". Actual advertiser spammers are soon going to catch onto this
ability, so the messages offering free copies of popular video games like
Minecraft no longer have to come with the polite request to copypaste them
into your address bar - they can just be clicked. This is just the tip of the
iceberg in the first few days. I know I'm not alone in wondering how long it
will be before someone finds a way to exploit these new comments as a vector
for directly delivering malware. And even if the hyperlinks are removed, it
has created a enormous new canvas on which trolls, children and idiots can
paint their own brand of humour. There does not currently seem to be any way
of blanket blocking URLs, instead needing a filter list set up with every
potential combination of keywords and domains.

The kind of people who create and post this stuff are the kind of people least
likely to care about creating multiple throwaway accounts or having this
rubbish leak into other websites. Anecdotally it seems that people who may
care enough to try and contribute meaningfully are now more likely to abandon
the comments section and Google+ out of frustration (just as this article
concludes with). This could be turn out to be nothing but a win for the
trolls, especially considering that removing the new features enabling them
would be to render the system identical to the old one.

I don't like the channel myself but a _very_ popular personality called
PewDiePie has now disabled comments on all his videos due to the change. Other
channels seem to be following suit or considering it. If you would like to
hear a very honest spiel about the frustration these changes provide, search
for a channel called NerdCubed and look at his recent videos for a video on
the comment section. The comments that could be found under your average
YouTube video were already enough to drive a content creator to exasperation
as is. Rather than helping, this has seemingly made things significantly
worse.

~~~
wavefunction
Hey Jon, great informative post! I wouldn't write off your potential
contributions to this site just because you're "not a hacker or software
engineer."

I know I'm not the only one here to say that if you like well-formulated
discussions like those that arise from your post, stick around and be a part
of HN...

------
studio816
Hey Google, Facebook and others - please implement reddit-style commenting
system. Thank you.

------
raymondduke
What a bunch of whiny kids. The Google+ addition to YouTube is a great change.

------
andyl
Google is starting to collapse under its own weight, as all behemoths
eventually do.

~~~
rhizome
Their first mistake was going public.

~~~
syncsynchalt
We should all be so lucky to make a mistake like that.

------
cjg
Nonplussed is a dreadful word. It means either: 1) so surprised and confused
that one is unsure how to react; 2) not disconcerted; unperturbed.

Definitions 1 and 2 are opposites. So, is he perturbed or not? "This is
totally weird", or "this is weird, but I can so cope with it". Who knows.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Nonplussed is also _used_ to mean "uninspired" or "unimpressed" \- like when
something is perhaps a little out of the ordinary [there is an expectation
that it will have an impact one way or another] but still doesn't really have
an effect on; almost exclusively in the phrase "I was pretty nonplussed by it
all" or a close analogue of that.

Certainly this is the usage I've heard and used for the last 20 years or so.

~~~
foobarqux
Those people are using it incorrectly.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Language is ultimately about usage. The dictionary I checked with confirmed
this meaning as a US neologism, I'm in the UK.

You could class this usage as "perplexed" but with a specific flavour of
'perplexity at the unimpressive nature of the subject'.

~~~
rafcavallaro
US colloquial usage - where the original, subtle UK usage goes to die; see
also "presently," and "beg the question."

