
Google+ Is Going To Mess Up The Internet - jonmwords
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_is_going_to_mess_up_the_internet.php#.TwRySkFEmmQ.hackernews
======
DanielBMarkham
I hate to do a tl;dr, but here it is: Google has bought and/or acquired so
many web properties that they all can't appear in their own little special
spot in search results. If you type in the name of an article you wrote and
it's the 3rd or 4th listing, below somebody just mentioning it on G+? It's
broken. Like Facebook, but to a greater degree, Google is making the internet
crap by putting it's own little frame around everything.

To me Google isn't evil by any means, but it has way too many smart people all
trying to jump on whatever the latest popular bandwagon might be. It's
definitely getting a "McGoogle" feel to it. Whatever is getting popular on the
web, some little Googlite is busy working to assimilate it. I like Google a
lot. The author has a point. At some point enough is enough. I think he
exaggerates to a much greater degree than is necessary. So far.

~~~
willy1234x1
Google.com has a high page rank. Thus plus.google.com has a high pagerank,
it's not gaming the system. It's just inheriting the pagerank.

~~~
mseebach
The specific mechanics are irrelevant, it's still broken.

~~~
willy1234x1
That's not broken. If you had website foo.com and then added bar.foo.com you
would expect that your pagerank transfer to your subdomain as well. Of course
when the owner of pagerank has this apply to them it's suddenly "broken"
though huh?

~~~
Simucal
I think you ignored mseebach's point.

The mechanics of how the search results are ranked (pagerank) is irrelevant.
The system is "broken" when original source content is ranking below people
merely linking to it from another site.

~~~
willy1234x1
I think he didn't make it clear enough. The system isn't broken, the original
source just has a lower pagerank.I fail to see where the issue is. I've seen
links rank lower than their relevant HN or Reddit posts on Google before.

~~~
redorb
Actually a sub domain is considered a different domain with it's own page
rank, I believe this is do to many hosted blogs at wordpress, blogger etc...

------
sequoia
"Well, that didn't make me feel much better, because now I know Google is
showing different Internets to different people."

OP is a web-tech blogger and he _just now_ learned this? I don't use G+ much
so I can't easily evaluate the rest of OPs assertions, but I am questioning
them by default because when someone makes one statement I know to be false
(or in this case inexcusably ignorant), it calls the rest of their statements
into question. This is unfortunate because I think much what OP says is
useful, but, c'mon: if you blog about web tech and didn't know google tailors
results, it makes you seem like you "don't know how any of this stuff works"
and I can't take you seriously in that regard.

I am very confused by the section about plagiarism/mis-attribution/non-
attribution. OP says his work was "almost-unattributed" but I couldn't find
any link back to him on the G+ posting. Did someone click the share button, or
paste in a link to his article? Or did someone copy and paste his article? If
it's the latter, this phenomenon is much older than the Internet and has
nothing to do with G+, specifically, besides the fact that Google may rate
your plagiarized "work" higher than the original on its results (which is a
distinct issue that applies to both plagiarized and properly-attributed
posts).

EDIT: I see the name now, it was next to the title in the post. Thank you OP.

~~~
jonmwords
It's "almost-attributed" because he included my name, but there was no link or
mention of my site. I don't care about the name. I care about the site. That's
what the whole rant is about.

Of course I knew that Google tailored results. How would I have been able to
include any context in this post otherwise? You took a human-written sentence
out of context and made it make less sense than it does in the body of the
post.

~~~
Zirro
"because my informal language gave trolls too much ammunition to make a
distracting non-point."

Don't call people trolls just because they highlight a confusing statement of
yours. Judging by the comments here (and on RWW), it was easy to interpret it
"wrong" even with the context of the article.

~~~
ceol
Even if he didn't know, would his not knowing that Google tailors results per-
user somehow make his other points worthless? That seems like a form of
_poisoning the well_.

~~~
sequoia
I looked up "poisoning the well" because I didn't know the precise meaning,
thanks for the new phrase! In fact I'm not "poisoning the well" because a) My
opinion was the one in question; Poisoning the well requires an audience and
poisoner and more importantly b) I didn't introduce this information, the
author wrote it himself.

Anyway regarding poisoning the well, check out the second example here:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well#Examples> " _The text is
written so obscurely that you can't figure out exactly what the thesis is
(hence "obscurantisme") and then when one criticizes it, the author says,
"Vous m'avez mal compris; vous êtes idiot" [roughly, "You misunderstood me;
you are an idiot"] (hence "terroriste")."_ " Ironically, this does precisely
describe the behavior of a commenter here, but it's not me. :p

~~~
ceol
Thanks for your response. What I meant was that him not knowing Google tailors
results has no bearing on his gripes about

1\. not being able to link to the original article,

2\. Google favoring Google+ posts in search results overall,

3\. and the Google+ interface looking and working terribly.

I used _poisoning the well_ because it was a related ad hominem: you're saying
him being wrong in this one instance means he is wrong in these other
unrelated instances.

~~~
sequoia
Hmm... I certainly didn't mean to say he "is wrong." Given many claims I can't
verify, I give the person the benefit of the doubt: I can't say if it's right
or wrong so I'll assume the author is right. BUT, once I see one assertion
that I know to be way off or highly uninformed, I revoke that "benefit of the
doubt" on all the other claims. As I said it's unfortunate, but I can't assume
the other assertions are any more valid than the one I know to be
wrong/uninformed.

Horse flogging, stop now: If you were to tell my that northern Spain is rainy
in the winter and Sweden has long dry summers, I'd take your word for it (I
know little about the climates in those countries). BUT if you then told me
snow is rare in winter in the US Northeast, which I know to be false, I ask
myself "hmm... could his statements about the other places be equally
inaccurate? He has demonstrated he does not know what he's talking about vis-
a-vis local climate trends." Do you see what I mean? I'm not saying anything
he wrote is true or false, it's just _called into question_ by a demonstration
of ignorance on the topic.

------
jroseattle
Google search results are beginning to bore the life out of me, and part of it
has to do with inane google-plus entries in the search results.

WTF goog search? It seems like ever since Bing showed up and did that little
left-hand column of filters, you started running around doing all sorts of
"innovation" and it seems messy and quality control is just starting to suck
wind. It's obvious you're tinkering with search results to promote your own
services -- did you not think anyone would notice?

Goog search, I don't even know you anymore.

~~~
sequoia
Jump ship! <https://duckduckgo.com/> esp. see:
<https://duckduckgo.com/goodies.html>

strips referers (so sites don't see whence you came), bang syntax (search
other sites directly), doesn't track, doesn't log, "vim keybindings"... it's
pretty sweet. :)

~~~
RobertKohr
I set that as my default search for my browser.

The main winning feature - they respect the + operator. I can string together
a bunch of technical terms, and know that all of them will appear in my
results. No doubts.

When google started going all fuzzy on me and returning things that sorta
matched what I was looking for, I tried ddg and was happy to get exact
matches.

I guess google is trying to satisfy the 80%, but I am in the 20% way too
often.

------
icebraining
_But never forget that you're Google's product, not its customer._

And never forget that you're a ReadWriteWeb product, not its customer. You
don't pay for the articles, your eyeballs are sold to RWW sponsors and
partners.

Sigh. Hypocrisy much? This is how most of the web works. The constant attacks
on Google or Facebook over it are ridiculous and tiring.

~~~
raganwald
Your comment makes two distinct points. The main point, an assertion of
hypocrisy, is not a valid disagreement, it's simply ad hominem tu quoque
(which reminds, me, what's the latin for "things said in Latin aren't nearly
as important as they seem?").

The second point, that "users are the product" is not a novel insight, makes
perfect sense.

~~~
thebigshane
_quidquid Latine dictum sit altum videtur_

    
    
       "anything said in Latin sounds profound". A recent 
       ironic Latin phrase to poke fun at people who seem to 
       use Latin phrases and quotations only to make themselves 
       sound more important or "educated".
    

[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_phrases_%28full%2...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_phrases_%28full%29)]

------
dasil003
I'm torn on this issue. Before Google+ things were all over the place. Google
had lots of great services, but they were poorly integrated, appeared and
disappeared frequently, didn't work with apps users or vice versa. Now Google
clearly is moving in a direction that promises better unification and clean-up
of annoying edge cases.

The problem is that Google is losing track of its mission statement. It's
seeing everything through the lens of social, which is not really in its DNA
to begin with. I understand they don't want to dismiss a threat and get their
lunch eaten, but they are throwing away a lot of what made them great. There's
gotta be a happy medium between completely ignoring up-and-coming threats and
throwing yourself so fiercely behind every trend that you end up sabotaging
your own strengths that are the very weak points of your feared competitors.

------
icebraining
_And he goes on to say that he'd rather see a Google+ post about the article
than the article itself, because, and I quote, "I can comment here without
having to jump through hoops." Hoops like reading the article?_

Sigh. No, jumps to _comment_. He likes the G+ links for the same reason I
prefer HN over a simple RSS feed: because we can read the article and _then_
comment easily in a good community.

The thing is: he can get to your article through the G+ link, but he can't get
to the G+ comments page from your article. Therefore, the G+ link is richer.

(Not that I'm condoning that Google put his products above everything else.
But to the G+ user, it's obviously better)

~~~
stanleydrew
I like this point, but i wonder: how would people feel if, for instance, this
HN conversation page ranked higher in Google search results than the actual
RWW article?

~~~
gdw2
In many cases, I find the HN comments just as insightful as the articles and
at least the HN comments link to the article (doesn't usually work the other
way around).

Perhaps the best situation would be if sites such as HN and + didn't take up
their own slot but were listed subordinate to the original article (underneath
it as an icon or a single-lined link).

------
bradleyland
Maybe this is obvious to everyone, but this is clearly Google's reactionary
response to the assertion that social is the future of search. At some time in
the past, there were a slew of articles espousing the belief that users would
change from searching Google for their quandaries to a more personal exchange
of information: asking someone you know.

I don't know what the underlying causes are, but I know three kinds of
internet users:

A) Those who are capable of finding information using a search engine

B) Those who aren't capable of finding information using a search engine

C) Those who never even try; they just ask someone

It's easy to jump to the conclusion that the type A individuals are simply
more "savvy", but my father, who hardly uses a computer, astounded me the
other day by deftly searching out a fantastic manual for the carburetor on his
Suzuki Samurai. My father is the type that would much rather be out de-gunking
his carb than sitting at a computer. How is he so effective at search? I would
have expected him to fall under the type C user category.

Google knows this scenario all too well. They're watching it play out in real
time on the web. They have to get in front of it and provide solutions for all
three types of users. For better or worse, giving Google+ pages "website"
status in their results is their way of getting ahead of sites like Facebook
and Quora.

------
takinola
Because Google favors G+ results in search, G+ is going to become a very
powerful SEO tool and this is going to push publishers to become more and more
invested in G+. Search is Google's advantage over Facebook and they are going
to press this advantage to the max in order to take on Facebook.

I can't say I blame them but I do wonder if there are no real anti-trust
issues here. How is this different than when MSFT used its OS dominance to
promote its (late-to-the-party) browser? Google is basically using their own
dominance in search to promote their (late-to-the-party) social network

~~~
jrockway
I'm not sure that this is true. Typically, Google's results are tailored for
you based on your circles and browsing history. This tweaking does not help
people that aren't already your friends.

As an example, when I search for the article this article is about with the
terms "wired world jury duty", I get the readwriteweb article (with a picture
of Jon Mitchell beside it) as the first result. Only the 7th result is a
Google+ page, and it's not explicitly advertised in any special way.

Google+ is about _your_ social network, not "the" social network.

(I personally love seeing the "8 of your friends have +1'd this" on the search
result page. Instant authenticity!)

------
vectorpush
> _One commenter said, "It's an algorithm. Get over yourself." Typical,
> orthodox devotion to the Almighty Google Algorithm and its Infallible
> Wisdom._

That's a pretty disingenuous take on his comment. He's actually suggesting
that algorithms are _not_ perfect and that it's silly to infer intention from
an arbitrary search result.

~~~
eCa
On the other hand..

An algorithm exists to reduce arbitrarity, and until recently there wasn't
much question about Google's success in that department. Now though, they are
a competitor against other search results and - since the algorithm is in
Google's possession - it is not too big a leap to suspect that the algorithm
might be tweaked just enough in Google's favour.

~~~
vectorpush
_it is not too big a leap to suspect that the algorithm might be tweaked just
enough in Google's favour_

No, it is not a "big leap", but that doesn't mean it's true. It is conceivable
that the search results are organic, especially given the content. It is also
conceivable that an impartial query could determine that a G+ page (or any
other page) is more relevant than the source article.

------
zalew
I enjoy G+ and it's a huge usability improvement over fb, but there's another
'feature' I simply can't stand - that comments are visible in the stream under
the post. I don't mind it under my friends' posts, but public popular profiles
are another story. I'd like to progressively replace my twitter newsfeed with
g+ profiles, but twitter gives me the comfort of not seeing opinions of some
random people who like to comment on mainstream, the names who shared (I don't
know some John Doe, why would I care he and +320 other people shared it?) and
other noise. G+ is nice with the preview and lack of artificial 140char limit,
but on twitter I can quickly scan the news without TMI I don't care about.
example: <http://i.imgur.com/8i8Az.png>

~~~
Pewpewarrows
I agree. I'd really like for there to be a "condensed" viewing option, where
characters after 140 or so are truncated, and comments are hidden by default.
Between that and their new controls for filtering how much of each circle ends
up in your main stream, skimming G+ would become a lot easier.

~~~
jonmwords
Me, too. This is the crux of the problem. Allowing such huge posts and so many
media types makes the stream impossible to scan. All the reactions the post is
getting from G+ worshippers skip over this point, so I guess some people like
being assaulted.

------
j_col
From the article:

"The quickest way to do that was to type 'jon mitchell jury duty' into the
Google search bar.

To my astonishment, the post I wanted was not the first result. It was the
third. Ranking above the result I wanted were two Google+ posts, one by me,
and one by our webmaster Jared, that were nothing more than links to the
article with brief comments."

So Google continues to use it's search muscle to promote it's own web services
first, and yet some people still find this surprising.

~~~
mamp
They should have a section for G+ results which are equivalent of 'paid links'
i.e. if their rank has been boosted then mark them as such. Otherwise they
risk losing credibility on search results as the first page is not best match
but unmarked advertising. While not evil per se, a little naughty.

------
VikingCoder
> The stream is so noisy...

See "Pump up (or down) the volume!" here:
[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/google-few-big-
improv...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/google-few-big-improvements-
before-new.html)

> Culturally, it feels like walking into a religious school.

Your Google+ is made up of who you Circle. Just like the parties you go to are
made up of the people who are at the parties you go to. If yours feels a
certain way, it is because of who you Circle, and who you share posts with.

> It was familiar because I had written it. I didn't see any attribution,
> though, let alone a link to the story.

Rohit Shrivastava was a bad actor, in this case. Plagiarism is a terrible
problem, and it's childish of you to blame Google+ for it. It is very easy to
correctly link to an article, or share it. I agree that you have legitimate
usability problems in many of the versions of Google+ that you used, but Rohit
intentionally plagiarized you. You don't want attribution, you want links -
that's understandable. Encourage people to use the tool the way it was
intended to be used, don't blame the tool for existing.

> Google thought I would prefer to click through Google+ to find my article
> than to go straight to it.

Google thought that you and your friends are more interesting to you than the
unwashed internet. In general, I think that's the correct choice. If I search
"Steve Smith," I probably care a lot more about my friend, than any of the
other Steve Smiths on the internet.

> One comment (to which Google+ allows no way to link)

I can't link to comments on your site either, Jon.

> Hoops like reading the article?

Hoops like Disqus, which you use allow people to comment.

> All this personalization and real-time stuff surely helps Google organize
> its content, but it's breaking search.

No, it's not. It's combining multiple searches into one interface. Searching
your Google+ friends is one aspect of what a person could possibly want to
search for. It sounds like you don't want to search the people you've Circled,
and what they say. Other people do. If you want to search the internet with as
little personalization as possible, your best bet is to open an incognito
window.

> Remember when it was "minimal?" This is what it looks like now:

Look at your own site, Jon. No, seriously - go back and look at it for a
moment. Sites got rich, with lots of content.

> But Google is different. Google used to be about organizing the world's
> information. It was a service to the entire Web. But this social tangent is
> changing that.

No, it's not. It's an outreach of that. It's a recognition that your view of
the people that you know, and what they think, and how they're talking, is
information - information that they're trying to help you organize, if you
wish to use their tools. If you wish to use Google News. If you wish to use
Android. If you wish to use Google+.

> Thanks to the Scoble effect, I have 8,000 encirclements on Google+. It
> creeps me out, because I don't know why I'm encircled by all these people,
> and I don't really get what they're talking about most of the time.

There are people who want to know if you say anything publicly. If you don't
want to say anything publicly, don't.

> I changed it, because my informal language gave trolls too much ammunition
> to make a distracting non-point.

Trolls?

Do you want people to care what you say, or don't you? Whose job is it to make
sure that people think you're saying what you mean to say?

> Google+ Hates The Internet

Who is the troll? No, seriously - please define the word troll such that it
includes the people who pointed out how ridiculous it was for you to say
"because now I know Google is showing different Internets to different
people", but excludes you, when you say "Google+ Hates The Internet."

> I hate Google+.

That's unfortunate. I wish it was a valuable tool for you, to help you
organize how you're sharing content with people you know. If it's not, then oh
well. My mom hates email. If she wrote an article like yours about how email
is ruining cursive, she'd have a valid point. But the world is moving forward
- and social interactions on the internet are going to spread everywhere. The
only question is, what tools are we going to want to use?

Again, you have legitimate complaints about sharing links on some platforms. I
hope they get fixed, over time. But your other complaints strike me as either
being your own fault for how you used the tool, other people's fault for doing
the same bad things that people have been doing forever, or minor differences
of opinion about usability... or just lamenting the decline of cursive.

~~~
eykanal
Your point-by-point answer focuses on the details of his post rather than his
general point, and makes your answer both pedantic and accusatory. The way I
read it, he only has a few main points:

1) Google+ makes it easy to unintentionally plagarize. Case in point, he
wasn't able to easily get from a re-share to the original.

2) Google (the search engine) should NOT rank a Google+ post which is itself a
clone of an actual article above the article itself. (Quote: 'But my query for
"jon mitchell jury duty" didn't mean "Show me what my Friends+ are saying
about 'jon mitchell jury duty.'" It meant "Show me Jon Mitchell's article
about jury duty!"'.)

3) The Google+ web app is ugly.

4) Google (the company) is forcing you use your Google+ profile to identify
yourself.

Summary) Google+ is a bad service.

You can disagree or agree with the above points, but simply quoting individual
sentences doesn't lead to positive discussion.

~~~
VikingCoder
Point taken.

I think Jon's post was a troll post, with some personal opinions (which are
totally valid), a few technical criticisms (totally valid), but mostly "user
error" and "nothing new."

The internet makes it easy to unintentionally plagiarize, the internet makes
it easy to intentionally plagiarize. Jon makes the valid point that linking is
better on the internet than quoting with attribution. He makes the invalid
point that plagiarism of any form is Google+'s fault.

Specific ranking is a matter of opinion. Really what Google (the search
engine) has to go off of is people's behaviors. If people legitimately like
Google+ posts more than anything else on the internet, how would you have them
behave?

Google (the company) is forcing you to use your Google+ profile to identify
yourself to people who use Google Search, and Google News. Facebook is forcing
you to use your Facebook profile to identify yourself when you post on
Facebook. Yahoo! is forcing you to use your Yahoo! ID to use Yahoo mail.

Summary) Google+ is as valuable to you as you choose to make it.

Jon's post was designed to attract attention, not to lead to positive
discussion. I responded in kind.

~~~
jonmwords
Totally fair. Bloggers are professional trolls, but, as I think you've
conceded (correct me if I'm wrong), I only trolled to get people in the door,
and there are substantive arguments waiting when you get there.

I just want to point out that you absolutely can permalink to Disqus comments.
The timestamp is the link, just like on Twitter.

~~~
VikingCoder
I missed the fact that the timestamp is the link.

"Dad is ruining this family." That's a way to get people in the door, and
there are substantive arguments waiting when you get there.

Isn't it a bit too negative, though? Dismissive? Whiny? Dishonest? Trollish?

There are people who want what's best for me, and there are people who attack
me without reason. What are your feelings for Google+, Jon? As far as I can
tell, you hate it, and you think it's ruining the internet.

~~~
aaronwall
"If people legitimately like Google+ posts more than anything else on the
internet, how would you have them behave?"

So are you suggesting that might makes right or that if a site is popular it
should be able to outrank the original content source just because it is
popular?

Using this theory shouldn't Google check to see if Facebook has a similar post
& rank that above the Google+ post whenever possible?

~~~

More seriously though, Google allows Google to create "relevancy" signals that
are unique to certain pieces of content hosted on Google.com (or, at a
minimum, over-represented among nepotistic sources), thus Google should
aggressively discount that self-serving bias to error on the side of safety
rather than setting up platforms that make it really easy to "accidentally"
plagiarize content.

Obviously Google biz dev people realize the above self-serving bias & will do
nothing to correct it, but it isn't a fact that should be ignored in public
debate. At least not if we want to have an honest debate.

------
resnamen
I'm on several Internet forums where people copy and paste entire articles
with no attribution. Slideshows are unrolled, images are hyperlinked, etc.

They're breaking the Internet!

No, wait, they have _been_ the Internet since the very beginning.

------
manojlds
"It creeps me out, because I don't know why I'm encircled by all these people,
and I don't really get what they're talking about most of the time"

The above line really shows the author doesn't get Google+. While I do have my
own grievances about Google+, the author doesn't make valid claims and
shouldn't be making any because the author has not understood it.

~~~
cheald
I have to agree. Google+ is more of a "rich Twitter" than a "not-Facebook
Facebook". People often mistake it for the latter, which I think may be a
large part of the reason that so many people are ho-hum about it.

------
thurn
His first point is just wrong. You _can_ link to the original post
([https://plus.google.com/102025628931490661645/posts/6D2CtDQx...](https://plus.google.com/102025628931490661645/posts/6D2CtDQxgWn)),
but only if it's visible to you. You obviously can't link to a post you can't
see.

~~~
sequoia
The plagiarizers response (in the link above) to why he copypasted rather
thank linking:

    
    
        You have a good point, I have only kept major content and not the whole article, at times I feel sharing a link just dissuades users from reading the post. Or plain & simple kills interest. I have though started making the change you have suggested few articles too long are again too daunting to read. But overall your feedback taken. Thanks for pointing this out.
    

"I feel sharing a link just dissuades users from reading the post." Wow.

~~~
shortformblog
The author's problem with G+ is not Google. His problem with G+ is bad
curators who don't respect the creators of the content. As curation is my
forte (I run a popular Tumblr news blog), Rohit Shrivastava's response really
annoys me.

Tumblr, which shares a lot of cues with Google+ in terms of how content is
shared publicly, has similar users to Rohit. I think it's bad form to post the
entire contents of an article. Post small bits, the gist, but encourage people
to keep reading if they like the basic idea. IMHO, Tumblr does a better job of
encouraging users to respect content creators.

But the thing is, the problem is not unique to either of these platforms. How
many random WordPress splogs steal RWW's content wholesale and just scrape the
RSS feed? A lot. All the big tech sites have this problem. The difference with
G+ is, Google seems to enable these copy-wholesale types better by giving them
strong positions in search results. Tumblr is not as good at SEO (it makes up
for it with design), so it's not as big an issue.

To users like Rohit, respect the content creators. It sucks when they get
screwed because you couldn't stop after a single paragraph or rewrite the
piece.

------
endtime
> And it hit me: True Believers of the Holy + might see this re-shared Google+
> post of an almost-unattributed rip of my story instead of the original.
> Google+ hates the Internet!

Stopped reading here. This is a waste-of-time troll article.

------
devmach
Google isn't the internet and if it fails , it's google's problem not ours( or
internet's ?). There is other alternatives to google's services, if one finds
the others better than google, he is free to use them. Seriously, just don't
use it if you hate it, that's the best response that you can give.

I don't use G+ because of the "Real Name Policy". It's my choice to give my
real name or not and Google don't respect my choices. I have FB, e-mail
(yay!), blog, skype etc... I have everything to communicate with my friends or
with the world ! I don't need some Nazi to give me an advice like "If You Have
Something You Don't Want Anyone To Know, Maybe You Shouldn't Be Doing It"....

~~~
j_col
I'm sorry, but for a large amount of people who only use Google for search,
Google _is_ the Internet. That's why I switched to DuckDuckGo a long time ago,
but people like me are a tiny minority.

Now speaking as a web publishing, if people started to copy-and-paste my
articles into Google+ and these entries got higher rankings on Google search
than my original content, I'd be pretty upset too. It isn't a question of what
search engine I use in this instance, but what the majority of everyone else
is using.

~~~
devmach
Google can be a giant now but it isn't mean that it's invincible. Google isn't
innovative since "Gmail", keeps making mistakes (buzz etc) and make people
angry. Nowadays people aren't royal to the products and even "normal" users
can change their habits (remember icq -> msn transformation)

~~~
danso
Can you elaborate on...well, everything, in your post? What do you mean "keeps
making mistakes." That Google, like everyone else, makes mistakes, and will
continue to do so until the end of the world? Or that it is making a higher-
than-expected number of mistakes?

~~~
devmach
Some mistakes that i remember :

* Buzz

* Code Search

* University resarch program for google search.

* Jaiku

* Dodgeball

That services either acquired or created by Google. They were valuable but now
closed . For example : Buzz has fascinating technology behing it, but still
failed. Google didn't understand users ( there was not so much people because
of the invitation thing and mass was important ), user wasn't able to
understand "What the heck is the Google Buzz" ( communication error by google
? ).

As for G+, Eric Schmidt's response wasn't the nicest response to give the
users who complains about real name policy. And again "elite g+ club"
enthusiasm was a mistake, like buzz, because a social network means nothing
without your friends ( this time they realised their mistake and act before
it's too late ).

------
mcgwiz
Out of desperation, Google's gone evil. For all of the shady things that
Google had done in the past that people said were evil, nothing approaches the
infection of their search service with Google+ rankings. Google had always
largely maintained the integrity of their search product which, despite minor
adulterations added over the years, was still essentially based on little more
than a strict, normative interpretation of the HTTP and HTML standards. By
doing so, they maintained the integrity of the company itself. The standards
now take a back seat to Google+.

The author is spot on about this. It's evil. In my estimation, it's
disrespectful to users. And it therefore creates a huge opportunity for Bing,
et al. What remains to be seen is whether, on balance, this degradation of the
search service is significant enough to drive away a substantial number of
users.

------
Zimahl
"And he goes on to say that he'd rather see a Google+ post about the article
than the article itself, because, and I quote, "I can comment here without
having to jump through hoops." Hoops like reading the article?"

The hoops I think he is talking about here is having to typically set up an
account on a third-party site to comment. I've not commented on a blog post or
article because I don't feel like figuring out a username/password (and then
remembering it), doing the typical confirmation steps, etc., just to give some
feedback. Some have Facebook integration to save you a step but I, like
others, don't particularly like having every comment I ever make aggregated by
Facebook.

------
lukeschlather
This is not actually a Google+ problem. It's a social networking problem.
Facebook.com, linkedin.com, and google.com are all preferred over anyone's
personal site.

My name is a good case study because it is, as far as I know, unique. Google
is currently doing the "right thing" but previously it had been returning my
Facebook page above my personal website. That's broken, but it has nothing to
do with G+, and everything to do with the way all search engines rank people.
(Bing does the "wrong thing" with respect to my name, and shows LinkedIn
first. DDG also throws in two random things from years ago in before getting
to my modern website.)

Search is a hard problem, and the result is subjective.

------
mike-cardwell
As well as the user experience being crap, there are the issues of Google
silently removing swearing from your profile, and kicking you off if they
don't think your name is real.

------
lubujackson
Lol, I just Googled "jon mitchell jury duty" myself and the first 4 links were
1) this post about google+, 2) google+ page 3) google+ page 4) the original
article. So writing about this problem has only made things worse!

~~~
rehack
For me its the 5th one now. It shows another blog based on this post(
<http://meta.ath0.com/2012/01/05/googleplusungood/> ) as 2nd in the search for
"jon mitchell jury duty".

------
toddh
While I agree Google is deprecating the URL, as indicated by the removal of
the Shared in Reader features, isn't this just a case of somebody cutting and
pasting without attribution? G+ can't do anything about that.

------
Vivtek
Yargh. OP searched on _his name_ plus "jury duty" and is complaining because
Google returns two G+ hits with _his name in the title_ before getting to the
article he wrote about jury duty?

------
gospelwut
Ah, SEO, how much I loathe everything you spawn and touch.

------
gldalmaso
I believe that Google itself will end up being the 'Google killer'.

I used to enjoy google products _because_ they had very little branding
footprint (or maybe I just thought they did), but now I'm constantly trying to
avoid branded/sponsored content in order to get the real thing I wanted.

I'll be slowly migrating away from google products from now on because of
that. Like the post puts it, I'm tired of being the product. If search and
social web won't change it's ways, then I'll be changing away from it.

------
jonmwords
Hi everybody. Sorry I can't respond to everyone, but this conversation has
been very productive, I think. Thanks so much.

------
jc4p
It seems like most people here are jumping on this guy's throat about minor
problems in what he wrote. Let me instead back-up one of his points with more
evidence:

First off: I am a huge Google fanboy, I'm a full-time Android developer and
Google scholarships even helped pay for my college. It seems that every time I
say anything bad about Google anywhere on the Internet people call me an Apple
fanboy so I just wanted to state that.

> Google's Weird Attempt At Social

Let's take a look at how many different ways I can do a simple chat with my
friends using Google products on my Android Ice Cream Sandwich device.

Google Voice - My main way of text messaging.

Google Talk - My main way IM client

Google+ Messaging (Formerly known as Huddle) - A mobile only way to
communicate with my G+ friends.

Here's where it gets weird:

Google Voice - Anything I can is instantly synched with the Google Voice app
on my iPad, Google Voice on my browser, the third party Google Voice app I use
on my computer and my phone.

Google Talk - Anything I do is synched up to Google Talk on my computer or any
place I'm logged in, which also means all my Google Talk conversation logs can
be found using the GMail app on my phone.

Google+ Messaging - Boom. Say something to any of my friends on here, unable
to look back at the messages unless I get on my phone again. "Oh, where did
Kyle say we're meeting up tonight? I should print directions" Oh, my phone's
out of battery and charging. Well, there goes that plan.

The craziest thing is that if I want to do Google+ Hangout (worst name I've
ever heard for any product) I have to either use the website or the Google+
Messaging app. That's right, if I want to do a Hangout on my phone (a feature
they're really pushing with their ICS video ads) I have to do it in a self-
contained application that will not reflect any changes on the website. How
does this make any sense?

It's even worse when you think about it. If I want to do a video chat with my
friends using ONLY Google products I actually have two different choices! I
can either Google+ Hangout with them using the Messenger application on my
phone (try to comprehend that sentence, seriously.) or I can use Google Talk's
video chatting (the feature they were pushing very hard with Honeycomb). Why
couldn't they just integrate group messaging and video chatting right into
Google Talk? I already have a fully functioning video chatting application on
my phone that doesn't require people to be on a website or their phones to use
it! I can use Google Talk's video chat to talk to anyone using Google Talk
anywhere!

I know that Google's Weird Attempt At Social is due to buying so many
different companies and not consolidating them, but it's not anything close to
an ideal user experience.

Sidenote: As soon as my Sprint contract is done I'm switching over to an
iPhone, iOS 5's text + iMessage all in one application is a wonderful
implementation of what Google should be doing with all of their conversational
products.

~~~
Spearchucker
Warning, OT: none of the apps you mention actually synchronise anything. Apart
from Google+ Messaging, all of the apps you mention access a single (central)
source of content.

Google+ Messaging, on the other hand, creates content locally, rather than
centrally. Syncing content implies sharing it between each device that needs
it. That may or may not include a central server.

~~~
jc4p
Isn't the whole point of using apps powered by Google that everything I do is
synced to "the cloud"? At least, shouldn't that be the point?

------
Varun06
I also enjoy using G+. and as the writer said that he wanted it to get off his
chest, that's what he did. so no problem...keep writing.. People will do what
they want to do...

------
ferrofluid
Mess up "The Internet"? I don't think so. If you don't like Google, switch to
Altavista.

~~~
waqf
For a lot of purposes I have switched to Wikipedia. Automated web search
simply isn't the right tool these days for many of the niches in which Google
got its foothold in the '90s.

------
obilgic
irony that his post is +1'ed 50 times (more than facebook shares)

------
yanw
This sort of post is further evidence that whenever G+ adds some new feature
or publishes new numbers a PR attack is imminent. Usually you can tell
straight away by the hyperbolic headlines.

------
gregguida
What a bunch of link bait... The title is blowing the whole thing out of
proportion. It should have been "My free Google service is messing up my free
Google service"

The beauty of the internet is and always has been that if you don't like
something its really way to switch to something else.

~~~
aaronwall
The core issue isn't just how one free Google service interacts with another
free Google service, but how when combined they undermine the copyright &
revenue potential for a content creator by displacing that person's work with
Google's copy of that person's work.

If you are not in business (and don't care if your favorite non-Google sites
eventually disappear) then it is no big deal.

For everyone else it has the potential to be a big deal.

If publishers do not complain about it now then it will get worse. How bad
does it have to get before the complaints are valid to you?

------
steele
Hmm, I enjoy using G+. Maybe I don't have the needs of the e-media i-blog web-
news e-lite.

