
Fire Vic Gundotra - hartator
http://hartator.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/fire-vic-gundotra/
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selmnoo
As bad as Google+ may be, it is still a thousand times better than Facebook
and all that Facebook represents. Purely as a social networking site, Google+
in my experiences is much better... it's just that Facebook won in numbers
because of network effects + first mover benefit. And I guess I'm one of the
few who's been okay with G+ integration? If you don't like it just ignore it,
don't go on it.

This little 'fire Vic' piece is silly and immature.

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yukichan
You can just not use Google+. I like hangouts for what it's worth. I like that
you can plugin stuff into it (basically an iframe).

The YouTube change is really sad though. YouTube is stellar in some many ways,
but the Google+ integration is definitely a black mark. I'm sorry there are so
many trolls on YouTube comments, but I don't want my public activity on
YouTube to be visible with my real name. I've since stopped participating in
comments, sharing, and uploading, even though I want to participate more. I
want to upload game videos I've recorded, but I don't want to do it using my
real name and API integration with Google+ pages and Google+ names like on
twitch is broken. I still consume content on YouTube, but besides watching I
hardly do anything anymore. I don't want a comment I made on a YouTube video
to be searchable 20 years from now by someone who uses my real name (an easily
searchable name).

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devx
#1 reason why I think they should _not_ fire Vic Gundotra: all of this is most
likely _not_ Gundotra's fault, but Larry Page's fault. Gundotra was VP of
engineering before and then he was VP of...social, or whatever that department
is called now. I don't think he wanted the job, but most likely given to him
to clean up the Android leadership structure a bit (I think Andy Rubin was
answering to him rather than directly to Larry Page back then), and to put one
of their more experienced leaders in charge of this major and critical (from
their perspective) project for Google. Maybe he wanted it in the same that he
wanted to "prove his worth" with a new major project, but I doubt he seeked
out a social project.

#2 reason why they should not fire Vic Gundotra: I really like him, ever since
he gave that Google I/O keynote in 2010 [1]. I thought he gave a _Steve Jobs_
level of keynote, and it's still the most exciting Google I/O I saw in recent
years. When Eric Schmidt announced his retirement from CEO position, I was
hoping Gundotra would get the job, actually.

Kill Google+ if they must, but I think firing Gundotra would be a big mistake.

[1] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY3U2GXhz44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY3U2GXhz44)

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judah
From the post, arguing against G+ integration in YouTube, he writes,

"Want to post anonymously your crazy trolling stuff or you want to assume your
weird troll behavior in front of your family, friends and co-workers"

Umm, pretty sure that's the point. Neither YouTube nor anybody anywhere really
wants "crazy trolling stuff". YouTube comments had been perhaps one of the
worst places for discussion on the web, second perhaps only to 4chan.

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yukichan
Not everyone who doesn't want their real name associated with comments is a
troll. Forcing real names isn't the solution. I don't want my boss or members
of my family to know I spend 40 hours a week playing games like DayZ and
commenting and liking videos where bandits are making awful jokes about
breaking people's legs and leaving them stranded in the middle of a forest in
gruesome video games. There's nothing wrong with liking horror or survival
games but not everyone needs to know that's my thing.

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a3n
I still have a google acccount, but I'm 99.9% of the time logged out of it. I
just do not want my search and other activity recorded by google and
presentable in some current or future surprising way. I don't want my search
results influenced by who google thinks I am.

I maintain the account for a couple of private purposes, but I'll eventually
move those away and then close the account.

Google feels like a snooping landlady who's always looking in my windows. All
I want to do is pay rent, shut the door, and use the property (service) the
way I want. I don't want interaction with the landlord.

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lnlyplnt
I think g+ is having a significant strategy tax on the rest of google's
products (similar to windows for microsoft). However, the benefits of g+ for
google are potentially huge. Organizing all products across one account system
helps them get to know you better, which in the end should result in better
products.

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this_user
I think G+ is kind of Google's Internet Explorer moment. The have dominated
search for over a decade, but the realised that social media had become
massively important and that they just weren't relevant there. They couldn't
acquire anyone large enough and their previous attempts at entering that area
basically all failed. So in the end they had a choice of either giving up and
risk being overrun over the long term or they could do what MS did with IE:
Leverage your dominant position in one field and force your new product down
your existing customer's collective throats.

The difference is that it worked for MS (for a time at least), but so far it
didn't really work for Google and instead their existing customer base is
getting more and more annoyed. However, at this point G+ is so deeply
integrated that a graceful exit from this strategy would be next to
impossible. Google is basically all in with this.

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dmschulman
All this integration is even more frustrating if you own an Android device.
Sending a Google Hangout invite to my mobile device when I'm sitting in front
of my laptop ready to go? Whyyyyyy?

I understand this can be disabled, but this was a terrible design decision in
favor of G+ brand of cross-platform integration.

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JamesBaxter
It was my understanding that Google + was created to tie Google products
together. The main purpose of this was to stop Google getting in trouble for
recommending its own services in search results.

I quite like Google +, it does need work but I don't see it going away any
time soon.

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sspross
I don't know if fireing Vic Gundotra is helping, but I definitly agree with
all the other points. How Google is trying to forcing us into G+ is just too
much and annoying... And I think they harm themself with ranking pages better
if they integrate G+...

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jrockway
Chats in Hangouts are searchable.

