
Google Stops Forcing You to Join Google+ When Opening a New Account - sebst
http://seb.st/google-stops-forcing-you-to-join-google-when-opening-a-new-account/
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Pxtl
... why? Why do I care if I have a G+ account? That's the mistake.

Give everybody a free G+ and then _never ever bother anybody about it if they
don 't use it_. The mistake was making G+ obtrusive.

Well, and conflating the concept of "comment" and "share" in Gootube.

And making the "real names only" thing universal instead of a rule that users
can enforce on people they interact with ("I don't want pseudonymous
commenters").

And forcing me to pick a profile every time I go to YouTube (leave that until
I start commenting/posting stuff, thanks).

~~~
michaelmior
The problem is that creating the account makes at least some small bit of my
personal info public which I might really not want to happen.

~~~
Mandelbug
Sounds like an easy default is to keep the profile private until the user
chooses to "create" the profile.

~~~
Pxtl
Exactly. No public posts? No public profile. Mention to the user that they're
doing something "profile-oriented" that's going to start appearing on their
profile if you really want to do the silly "activity-log" approach to a home-
page (that is, every YouTube video or Blogger post the user likes and comments
appears on their page) - once the user starts doing actions in public, that's
the time to lazily create the public page, and that's the time to ask the user
the hard question of "hey, I'm going to start collecting all your public
commentary and public likes into a single place so everybody can see the stuff
you say and like, is this good? yes? Awesome. No? Let me set up a pseudonym
for you to do that"

Google obviously wanted people who were active public commenters/contributors
on their properties (YouTube, Picasa, and Blogger) to automagically be part of
Plus, and that's not a terrible idea (obviously treating commenting and
sharing as the _exact same operation_ without distinguishing it to the reader
_is_ a terrible idea, but that's just a detail). But why foist Plus on all the
lurkers? Lurkers don't add value to Plus anyways.

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aikah
G+ is a failure,let's be clear about that.

You cant force people into a social network.Sure You can merge different
services under a single "login" system,but dont make it a social network where
things are published on a public profile,that's insane.

People dont need 10 social networks...doesnt mean there is no room for
competition,just that G+ didnt innovate,or try to have a fresh take on social
networks.

~~~
davidgerard
> G+ is a failure,let's be clear about that.

I'm one of the few people who actually uses G+ by choice, and has done since
public launch. But I'm not delusional about its glaring failure.

You try saying "G+ is a failure" on G+ and see the hilarity that ensues as
people say "MINE is great", "You're not using it right", "Your link doesn't
talk about metrics in [unspecified niche] where I assure you it's TOTALLY
popular" and literally call you a Facebook shill. Good Lord.

I mean, I stick around for the few people and one community that isn't on
Facebook. But G+ is a huge planned subdivision built in a desert, all the
roads built but no houses, with a few people camped out around a fire going
"WELL THERE'S LOTS OF PEOPLE AROUND THIS FIRE."

~~~
rodgerd
> I mean, I stick around for the few people and one community that isn't on
> Facebook. But G+ is a huge planned subdivision built in a desert, all the
> roads built but no houses, with a few people camped out around a fire going
> "WELL THERE'S LOTS OF PEOPLE AROUND THIS FIRE."

It can be (there's a Linux fire and an RPG fire, for example). The fundamental
problem for me, as another long-time user, is that they started right ("G+ is
Facebook you can control sanely") that then progressed into so many of the
things people hate about Facebook (trying to ram it into places you didn't
want it, the real names policy, and so on). Once they eroded the perception
that G+ was a privacy-enhanced Facebook, it was a dead man walking.

~~~
davidgerard
I think the nymwars was the tipping point: they alienated specifically their
seed audience of techies (people who had friends at Google to give them an
invite), and those techies told _everyone they knew_ "STAY AWAY". That's when
I _first_ heard the list of excuses I give there (particularly "it's hugely
popular in some sector you don't have numbers for!").

I mean, bloody hell. People desperately wanted Facebook the application
without Facebook the company. Google could have had that if they just _hadn 't
fucked up_ and _hadn 't gotten greedy_.

~~~
yuhong
My favorite is this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7093993](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7093993)

~~~
davidgerard
This is the sort of thing that says "never employ an ex-Microsoft exec under
any circumstances". Just _how much_ destruction of Google's brand was Vic
Gundotra responsible for?

~~~
yuhong
Reminded me of: [http://piaw.blogspot.ca/2010/05/organizational-
thinking.html](http://piaw.blogspot.ca/2010/05/organizational-thinking.html)

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Animats
It's recognition of the fact that "social" isn't a good marketing medium. When
G+ launched, Google employees were told that their bonus would depend on what
they did in "social" products. For a year, Google obsessed on "social". In the
end, it was far less profitable than search.

Facebook seems to have hit the limits of user ad tolerance. Myspace ran into
that limit, and it killed them. It's not yet clear if it will kill Facebook.

It may be time for social network systems that don't have ads. Ones where you
pay a few dollars a month on your phone bill. As computing gets cheaper, the
cost of such a service drops, while the "free" ad-supported services keep
running more ads. "Free" has an attention cost, and it may be possible to
undercut "free" on perceived price.

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curiousDog
Looks like they'll be getting rid of it altogether soon. The YouTube
integration was the biggest fail. Why would I ever want to see comments from
people who were sharing the video on their wall with their friends?

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IneffablePigeon
The day I adblocked the youtube comments div was an excellent day.

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andrey-p
Not a massive fan of the G+ Youtube comment merger but.. that would've been an
excellent idea even when anonymous comments were a thing.

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kurtle
I think this is a really good answer to the question of "What do you do when
[Google | Facebook | Microsoft] enter this space?"

Just because they're big and have scale of users doesn't mean that a) they can
create a product that people want to use, b) failing that are able to force
them to use this product.

Though it was a defeat against Facebook, this is a good sign for smaller
companies: the behemoths aren't invincible.

~~~
hkmurakami
_> Though it was a defeat against Facebook, this is a good sign for smaller
companies: the behemoths aren't invincible._

I'm not sure if that follows, considering G+ itself was going up against a
behemoth in FB, not a small company by any means even a few years back.

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itg
Now if they will allow us to unlink our YouTube accounts. I put the YouTube
app on my phone, and since I already am signed in with the Gmail app, it links
my account. No choice is given and there is no way, that I know of, to undo
this.

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icelancer
Yup. Incredibly frustrating since I have a business YouTube account and a
personal Gmail account.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "I have a business YouTube account and a personal Gmail account."

This was Google's biggest mistake. They either didn't realise or didn't care
that a huge number of users have multiple Google accounts and very good
reasons for it. G+ works well if you have one account for everything. If you
have 2 or more than that you're screwed.

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Havoc
About damn time they stop trying to ram that down users throats.

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bborud
So they are giving up now? This makes me so angry. The main reason I gave up
on Google+ is because they are clearly not going to address the things that
people see as problems. Like the useless notification scheme. I mean HOW HARD
CAN IT BE TO PUT THAT ON AN OKR AND GET IT DONE!?

Get someone to own G+ who gives a fuck and give it another try.

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RegW
Is there (somewhere out there) a protocol for a distributed social network
where participants have control?

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robin_reala
Sounds like Diaspora: [https://joindiaspora.com/](https://joindiaspora.com/)

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zacharycohn
Now if only they'd offer the ability to merge G+ accounts. Somehow, I have
two. Which means I have two youtube accounts, which is a constant fiasco.

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lingben
for all its vaunted collective IQ google has an astonishing propensity to make
extremely poor decisions (I'm referring to the original strategy of G+ not the
corrective and more decision like this one)

I suppose there is no remedy for the ills that can befall any large
organization or for the fallacies which drive such poor decision making

there is a cold solace in that for the rest of us

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80ProofPudding
G+, you coulda been a contender.

~~~
Pxtl
Yes, it could have. If Google hadn't managed to do _every possible thing wrong
with it_. Seriously, the sheer number of bone-headed catastrophic screw ups
involved in G+ is impressive.

The idea that Google could build a unified social network across all their
platforms was good. The idea that Google could also make a Facebook-clone was
good.

Every other idea they put into G+ after that was awful.

~~~
d0m
I think the design of G+ is gorgeous. I keep referring to it again and again.
And as you say, the vision was great, but the execution of forcing everyone on
it was odd.

~~~
davidgerard
Yeah, the design was the thing they nicked from Diaspora.

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onedev
Oh my god, thanks the heavens.

~~~
Terretta
The English idiom is "Thank heavens."

\--
[http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/thank+heavens](http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/thank+heavens)

