
Introducing the new Google+ - runesoerensen
https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/11/introducing-new-google.html
======
rogerbinns
Google seem to keep making worse the thing that matters most to me. What I
want is to conveniently read. I want to see content, from a variety of
sources. I want density. I want to catch up and be aware.

It was like that in the earlier days. Every update kept reducing the amount of
visible content, and severe reductions in density. Here is a screenshot of my
screen - [http://i.imgur.com/fM2WIVf.png](http://i.imgur.com/fM2WIVf.png)
(1920x1200) - almost two million pixels. There are a total of 7 (yes seven)
sentences of article and 5 sentences of comments. I have to click and/or
scroll to see anything more. (This is their densest layout - the single column
version has a total of 4 sentences.)

With Reader they had a community of people who read a lot, and an interface
design that worked well for doing that. They took that away. By not having
access via an open standard like RSS for G+ streams, they don't even allow
alternative interfaces that can address their problems.

I can only conclude that the people who persevere with G+ do so despite it,
not because of it. They must also be very patient and do a heck of a lot of
scrolling.

~~~
toyg
It's not just a Google thing. Recently there was a HN thread on devmag.io --
they have the same problem. I measured it: in the same space HN gives me 18
stories, Devmag.io gives me barely 2.

Unfortunately, I think Google people know and they just don't care. They don't
want people who know what RSS is, people who care about information density;
they are going after the Pinterest crowd, the sort of people who read
Cosmopolitan, watch reality shows, and post drunken pics on Facebook.

~~~
yoodenvranx
The new reddit mobile page has the same problem. On the old
[http://i.reddit.com](http://i.reddit.com) I usually get 1-3 more links per
page than on the new [http://m.reddit.com](http://m.reddit.com)

Who actually thinks that all that padding and those stupid navbars are a good
idea? On mobile my screen estate is very valuable and I don't want to waste it
on unnecessary things.

~~~
bitwize
Designers from San Francisco, that's who. Current design trends favor
"negative space", so text has to be spaced widely, with huge margins and
hairsbreadth-thin fonts.

~~~
ajmurmann
You forgot to mention the very low cost, especially for font because we gotta
hide that pesky content that we have to show after all.

~~~
alexschleber
Images (even small, low-quality ones) are far more costly than text, no?

------
criley2
Shame, the single anti-feature that prevents me from joining is still in
place:

>Join Google+ by creating your public profile

I don't want a Public Profile. I don't need my gmail account to have a public
profile. I don't need search engines, randos, nobodies, everybody to have
access to my profile.

Why does Google mandate Public Profiles? I don't understand. Facebook does not
mandate Public profiles (if you visit my Facebook page, it says 404 error page
does not exist unless you are logged in and within friend of a friend distance
to me).

One day Google will allow me to be apart of their network without mandating
that I provide the public internet a profile.

And yes, I realize that aspects on the public profile can be manually disabled
(it takes some 100-120 clicks to turn off every feature, one by one, even
though the page itself remains public including your image and name).

~~~
edent
There is a hidden option to create a totally private profile.

[https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2015/05/how-to-make-your-google-
acc...](https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2015/05/how-to-make-your-google-account-
completely-private/)

You have to set your audience settings to "No one".

~~~
criley2
This doesn't remove the public page, it simply adds a "restricted" message to
still-public page that still contains information like name and photo.

On Facebook, if I restrict my page and send you the link you will see: 404
error, page not found

On G+ if I follow your advice and send you the link you will see: <MY NAME>
<MY PHOTO> has restricted this page.

It's still a fully public profile which resolves as a URL and contains real
personal information (name+photo) that cannot be disabled.

~~~
edent
That's a reasonable point - although there's no obligation for you to use your
real phone. You could be any one of a thousand Chris Rileys.

But, yeah, I agree that G+ is dreadful.

~~~
criley2
The only reason I'm willing to use any semblance of my name at all is because,
as you point out, I am functionally anonymous with a generic name shared by
major athletes and professionals.

For me, an anonymous white male, it's a small issue. But for a minority with
an easily identified unique name, or a girl against whom someone would spend
tons more effort to identify, a forced Public page including mandatory public
information such as name and photo isn't just inconvenient, it's dangerous.

------
bronson

        Charise Strandberg via Google+
        Daniel Brinneman shared this via Google+
        Antonio Valdés via Google+
    

I see Google+'s commenting is still drowned out by sharing notifications.
Google, there's a reason everyone turned off trackbacks ten years ago. It's
just noise for anyone reading that page to filter out.

~~~
DiThi
It also happens with Tumblr, and just as bad. At least FB puts "<some people
you know> and 1526 others shared this" instead of a long list of noise.

In Tumblr it sort of works because nobody reads the "comments", instead some
people share the content adding a note and the "comment thread" is actually a
nested quote.

~~~
Grue3
I even wrote a script that goes through every note on a post and posts all the
reblogs with comments. It's technically against Tumblr TOS, but as long as I
only occasionally run it, it should be alright.

------
kin
Collections is kind of like Pinterest. Communities is kind of like Reddit.
Plus was kind of like Facebook. Buzz was kind of like Twitter.

They really need to stop imitating and start innovating. At this point I don't
even think they know who they're targeting they're just trying to do a little
bit of everything but they don't do it well enough for me to want to use it.

~~~
viraptor
Pinterest is kind of like delicious, reddit is kind of like forums, facebook
is kind of like myspace, twitter is kind of like irc. There's nothing new.
Iteration on a good idea is not a bad thing.

~~~
kin
The thing is, everything Google is doing is a lesser form of what it's copying
so it's not an iteration. That and they're not just copying one thing they're
trying to do everything. Why? All of your examples sought to improve upon one
thing, do it well, and do it with focus.

My main point is that Google's social products are all over the place. They're
firing on all cylinders but not aiming at anything.

~~~
foxylad
I'm guessing they see the integration as an iteration. A lot of people would
prefer to have a single sign-on, cross-linking etc. rather than having
separate Facebook, Twitter, etc.

------
FreeKill
Does it still cross link comments from other Google properties like YouTube if
you post a video for example? I liked using Google+ a lot as more of a
blogging platform instead of a social network, but as soon as they integrated
that, it completely killed it for me. Every time I made a post with a video
embedded, it would add all the horrible racist, hateful, trash comments from
YouTube making it seem like those commenters were actually in my social
network. I just couldn't risk that someone in my professional network might be
equating the terrible commenting with me personally, so I gave up on it.

~~~
Shooti
They killed that a couple of months ago.

~~~
lemevi
What they haven't fixed though is requiring your account to have Google+ to be
able to comment or interact on YouTube. Until they fix that participating in
YouTube in any other fashion other than upvoting videos and watching them is
impossible for me. I do not want to create a Google+ account.

~~~
tdkl
Not just the ability to comment, but modify videos to the playlist. Otherwise
it's just read only if you remove the G+ account.

------
codingdave
Their layout of content still nixes it for me. I don't know where this idea of
multiple columns of content without any horizontal sync with each other
originated, but it does not work for me, not on any site. I read from left-to-
right, top-to-bottom. I know other languages differ. But despite the age-old
advice that people on the web do not read, they skim, this trend is too much
of a disconnect for how I want to see information.

~~~
pavel_lishin
It seems more reminiscent of a market or a bazaar - they seem to be aiming for
people who don't need to look over every stall in detail, but for the people
who let their gaze wander until something catches their eye.

Which is fine, but I'm not that person, and that's not something I have a use
for.

~~~
shostack
Totally agree with this analogy.

I would be surprised if one of the primary drivers of high CTR isn't the
image, just like it is with other similar experiences.

------
munchor
The only times I ever used Google+ was because of the Communities. They're
well designed and implemented, and they were always Google+'s strongest
selling point. It seems they're taking a more Communities-focused approach,
which seems like the right path for them.

~~~
toyg
_> they were always Google+'s strongest selling point_

Uh? IMHO pictures were their strongest point. They emphasise and manage pics
better than FB.

~~~
gtremper
It appears Photos was strong enough to make it its own product.

------
pbreit
Seems like it's still drastically missing the mark on having a reason for
being. Why would I use this? What would I put on there? Why there and not
elsewhere?

~~~
liquidise
Exactly. To most users, "we aren't facebook" is not an effective sales pitch.

As far as a comparison goes: both UI's leave me disappointed, but everyone i
know is on facebook. I can think of 1 person who uses G+ with any regularity.
By that measure, G+ loses every time.

~~~
andreasvc
A "don't be evil kind of Facebook" could've been appealing. Unfortunately
they're decidedly not that, with their real name policy, forced integration
with other services, public profiles, etc.

~~~
romanovcode
Google is as evil as Facebook, if not more.

~~~
andreasvc
Clearly. I never understood how anyone could take the "don't be evil" slogan
seriously, actually. It's comic book level of ethics. We can disagree over
whether they are actually being evil though, but what is clear to me is that
there is a seriously worrying _potential_ for evil with the amount of
information they control through being de-facto monopolies.

------
Shooti
Old Way: Two separate concepts called the same thing. Google+ (Unified
profile/account/sharing system across services) and Google+ (Social network).

This backfired because what people made the natural inference that the purpose
of the former was to force use of the later when the opposite was what Google
was aiming for. The purpose of the social network was to promote the unified
login, but instead it poisoned the well.

New way: Concept of a "Google+ account" has been folded into the main Google
Account as a new cross-service "About Me" account
[https://aboutme.google.com/](https://aboutme.google.com/) . Google+ (Social
Network) is now just a client of the former, so the G+ website is shedding all
the features related to its old dual system integrator role.

That's what I can make out, anyway.

------
on_and_off
Good. Collections is the best feature of Google+ and a way better
implementation of the circle feature. Communities is another strong point of
the service, even though Collections alone would have been enough for me.

The mobile design on Android is disconcerting to say the least, according to
the material spec, tabs are at the top. Putting them at the bottom allows one
handed navigation BUT is way too close to the navigation bar and usually cause
many false taps.

------
eagsalazar2
Most irritating detail is the interaction where there is what looks like a
select box (little down arrow and everything) but it expands when you hover
over it after a small delay. The delay ends up being the most irritating thing
because it is just enough time for me to accidentally click where the drop
down _used_ to be and is now a home button!

It is small but this gets me every time and it is just such a gross usability
fail. Maybe this is unfair but I have a hard time getting past it to give g+ a
chance when my first explorations smacks me with an experience that is so
poorly constructed and violates so many obvious usability best practices.

~~~
xrstf
I always thought I was the only one who constantly misclicked those idiotic
dropdowns. The same goes for the Circle button, which expands after a while
and I always accidentally put people in the wrong circle.

------
i386
I'm not entirely sure what Google+ is anymore. Who is the target audience?

~~~
cdnsteve
Googlers!

~~~
scholia
Googlers and Linux users!

Quite a few photographers there as well, though I haven't looked for a year or
two...

~~~
yeukhon
I seriously want to ask Linus why he's so into G+.

~~~
jacquesm
This should answer your question:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaj6RLfIZIE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaj6RLfIZIE)

------
mindcrime
I just logged in and nothing looks any different to me at a first glance. And
as much as I want to like G+, I can't get over the absolutely abysmal design
with that single narrow column and all that empty space off to the sides. It
just grates at my nerves for some reason. And the multi-column view is shit,
which is why I turned it off in the first place.

Facebook, OTOH, has a design which is way too "busy". And never mind that both
Facebook and G+ are walled-gardens anyway. I need to just convince more of my
friends to join up with GNU Social.

~~~
bad_user
You have to opt-in to the new interface.

~~~
mindcrime
Yeah, but I don't get any prompt to do so, and can't even find any mention of
it. Maybe they're doing one of those Google "roll this out to different users
at different times" things. _shrug_

~~~
mrbill
Same here, even after logging out and back in, no opt-in for the "new" UI yet.

~~~
brazzledazzle
I got it when I opted into the new URL. I wonder if they can only carry one
"opt-in" prompt at a time and this happened to overlap with that.

------
erikpukinskis
I wonder why Google is unable to do what Microsoft has always done. MS
generally never leads markets, but they usually can put together a passable
product that gets at least double digit share on their third try.

Google seems to lead some charges (i.e. Android) but definitely don't have the
third-time's-the-charm luck. Maybe these are mutually exclusive properties of
different organizational principles.

------
eps
> _conversations around everything from Zombie Cats to Vintage Calculators_

Now they are trying to be a Reddit.

------
Osiris
I really don't like multi-column layouts. It's impossible to read. arstechnica
is a really good example. There are three columns, each with blocks that are
different sizes.

So, I end up reading all the headlines from the left column, scrolling back to
the stop, reading the second column, then scrolling back up for the third
column.

I've tried to use Google+ on my Android device and the experience is awful.
You get a few words and a huge picture that doesn't tell you anything about
the post.

~~~
duderific
FWIW, you can change the layout on arstechnica: \- Hover over Main Menu in the
navigation \- in the upper right corner of the menu, there is a label "Layout"
that has some icons you can click to adjust to a two column layout that is
more top-to-bottom friendly.

------
chintan
Please fix the Google Groups UI - I'm sure there is more engagement/activity
in Groups than in Google+ communities. I always fear when clicking on a google
group link in google results.

Add to this - recently some of the results go to a white-labeled community
site:
[https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/analytics/oSR...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/analytics/oSR62Ubf1tQ)

~~~
badloginagain
Don't worry, your Groups will be assimilated into a Community, and you'll have
access to all that old content once you sign in with your YouTube account.

------
rottyguy
I may be in the minority here but Reddit is MUCH more interesting to me than
fb these days. My friends' content is simply not that interesting to me
whereas I can find a SIG on Reddit that has what I want.

~~~
puredemo
It's been that way for years...

------
izzydata
I'm confused as to why my google+ has almost 200,000 views, but it has zero
posts and basically nobody in my circles. Is this counter broken for anyone
else?

~~~
jnpatel
Are you really active in Gmail? It could be lots of people you correspond with
clicking through to your profile, from the link that typically shows up in the
right sidebar.

~~~
izzydata
Nope, nobody contacts me personally through gmail. I kind of wish g+ had a
similar stats tracker as youtube so I could check where all the traffic came
from.

------
cjcenizal
Ironically, this blog post doesn't contain an actual link to Google+.

~~~
jboy55
I followed the link to the 'read this to see how to enable google plus' and
that didn't even work. I then realized I had no idea if the google plus page I
was looking at was 'new' or not. I did notice that all of the random stories
from people I didn't know dissapeared.

All I'm left with is the pages from companies that are active on Google Plus
in the attempt to give Google a social signal and sway Google's page rank in
their favor.

Edit: to add, those companies are friend's companies and current and former
employers. These companies asked all their employees to add them and get
pester their social networks to add them as well.

------
arca_vorago
My biggest gripe with google+ was and is that it lacks clear
compartmentalization of information. There is just something about using a
profile in a public way that also can potentially tie into an email, calendar,
everything portal that just bugs me something fierce. Also, I know they
finally revised it, but the real names policy and the wierd way they try to
force you to merge youtube/gmail profiles into google+ really put me off as
well. A similar gripe with logging into multiple accounts in a single browser
session, I just want to be able to logoff and login as a different user, not
merge 10 profiles!

That being said, I have found some communities on google+ that overwhelmed the
negatives and I found myself using it anyway. There are some communities that
aren't anywhere else.

------
ocdtrekkie
A stunning fact came from a Googler today:
[https://plus.google.com/+IlyaGrigorik/posts/GzjRiVUED1S](https://plus.google.com/+IlyaGrigorik/posts/GzjRiVUED1S)

The previous Google+ site took an AVERAGE of 12 seconds to load, and was 22 MB
when gzipped. This company, which once wrote a blog called "speed matters",
where they announced they'd penalize sites for slow loading, had an average
page load of 12 seconds on their social network. (For single-threaded browsers
like Firefox, it'd actually freeze up the browser for about ten of those
seconds.)

I'm not super fond of the design, but what I am super fond of, is that Google+
no longer crashes my web browser.

~~~
puredemo
You mean an Alphabater?

------
dredmorbius
There's a meta-level of this roll-out that I find quite striking.

1\. Google have previewed this as an _optional_ experience

2\. Which users can _roll back_ from. Unlike earlier major releases, it's not
dumped all-at-once, and it's not a "if you try it there's no going back"
option (as CoverPhotos were a few years back).

2\. The changes were undertaken with user-involvement. Google are loudly
touting that they solicited input from users, even visiting them at home, to
come up with the new design. Mind, I wasn't part of this, but that appears to
be a striking change from previous roll-outs, which were very much "we know
best" events.

Last December we saw a sneak preview of the New Google+ Development Process: a
substantial change to the Notifications mechanism ... which was all but
universally panned. I wrote a long and piquant post about how damned important
G+'s Notifications mechanism was to the site (it's among the few parts of the
service which are really quite compelling). Mucking with that is dangerous
business.

In less than 24 hours, Google reversed the push.

I was absolutely stunned. Said so.

[https://plus.google.com/+BalajiSrinivasan/posts/Wntg5XoEHmb](https://plus.google.com/+BalajiSrinivasan/posts/Wntg5XoEHmb)

I'm not sure how the changes here will look, I'm using the Android client, not
desktop, for the present. I suspect I'll have some sharp criticisms (I usually
do). But I'm seeing some encouraging signs in the _process_.

------
electricblue
Still not sure who this is for and why they would want to use it. Google is at
its best when they are fixing problems in a novel way, not trying to ape
everyone else

------
77ko
Good they are still working on Google plus but what's the difference between a
community and a collection? And what happened to circles?

------
chimeracoder
I don't like the gif in the middle of the page. With a video I can easily
pause or skip to the part I want to see. Even an image carousel for four
static images would have the same effect.

As it is, I instead have to wait until it cycles around to look at any given
image, which is rather frustrating.

------
hackaflocka
Google has trouble understanding that it was a Black Swan. That its initial
success may not be replicable.

------
mark_l_watson
The changes are OK, I suppose.

I read stuff on G+ a lot, my preference being on my Note 4 rather than on a
laptop size browser. Maybe it just because I have a lot of interesting people
in my circles, but in any case there is usually a lot of interesting (and even
useful) information.

------
aikah
A service that has no identity, which a bunch of copy of other services glued
together. I didn't want to use Google+ , i'm not going to use Google ++ and
get a different product every 2 years because it still doesn't know what it
wants to be.

------
rch
They're still stuck on oversharing. Following a collection pops up a warning
explaining that it's going to be public everywhere forever, with the options
'OK got it' and 'Cancel'... I wonder which option is more popular.

------
hackuser
How good are the discussions on Google+? I hesitate to share my identity and
data with Google, but I'm also on a never-ending (that might turn out to be
literally true) quest to find sophisticated, intelligent discussion of
politics and policy.

~~~
dredmorbius
It really depends on your specific interests and community. Total size is
perhaps 1/3 - 1/4 FB, but there are zones of excellence.

If you want to find everyone, go to Facebook.

If you want discussion, Reddit.

Topics in depth, blogs.

High S/N: Metafilter.

This might be of interest:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/trackin...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/tracking_the_conversation_fp_global_100_thinkers/)

------
lxe
Looks like G+ is still using the old Google logo.

------
bluthru
When is Google going to drop the dingy grey as a background color? It's so
gross.

Google had things figured out with its crisp white aesthetic. Superfluous
cards and shadows (thanks Material Design) has borked design at Google.

------
subpixel
> If you head over to Google+ today

I literally have no idea how I would even do that.

~~~
djcapelis
Go to your address bar and type this special and complex incantation:
[https://plus.google.com](https://plus.google.com)

~~~
subpixel
My point is that I've never done that, I've never heard of other people doing
that much, and nowhere on the page does it explain how to do that.

But the general confusion that Google+ elicits in people is perhaps best
reflected in one of the 'Collections' linked to from the blog post, wherein a
woman has shared numerous messages about her personal life under a photo of a
vintage calculator.

------
sawwit
_> “Let’s go”_

I'm not seeing it.

~~~
dbspin
Me niether.

------
pjbrunet
Everything is too big. Must zoom out. I bought this big screen to see more
stuff, not because I'm blind. Also the animation should be optional--sluggish
and annoying. It feels slow, like too much Javascript, bad coding. The
"collections" looks like a copy of Pinterest. People tab is not working at all
for me--it's just broken.

------
monochromatic
Hopefully I can look forward to YouTube and every other fucking Google website
encouraging me to sign in / join. Again.

------
RawData
Wait wait wait...Google+ still exists?!

~~~
fredkbloggs
If you never define something concretely, no one can say whether the thing
exists or not. "Google+" was never any specific service or technology or
product, so the term is just a label that Google management can apply to
whatever they want.

Google Reader was alive. It's now dead.

Google+? Impossible to say.

------
cft
The right thing to do with Google+ is to drop it. Google should not aspire to
build social products: they are an algorithm company. Their attempts to
interact with humans historically have failed: see adsence publishers, support
of Nexus phones, etc.

------
BoppreH
Communities were front and center in Orkut, Google's old social network. For
some reason it only made success in a few countries, but absolutely dominated
in those (Brazil predominantly).

This literally feels like a rollback to their old social network.

------
mjpearson
No, please just make it stop.

------
hartator
Clicked on the link "Zombie Cats", started scrolling to the end of the posts,
got "There was a problem completing this action. Please try again.".

Impressive demo.

------
Havoc
Is the plan still to force it onto users/victims? If they fixed that part then
it's a massive improvement

------
pyrrhotech
Time to short Google. It's clear they are out of ideas and their core business
is under siege by ad blockers.

------
jzelinskie
Clicking "Profile" in the left menu reproduces a 500 HTTP error for me.
Anybody else seeing this issue?

------
cakeface
Is it still possible to chat / hangout through google+? I cannot seem to
figure out how to do it.

------
bencollier49
Looks the same as before: rubbish.

------
frade33
Google is a prime example. Money alone can not buy love, and can not buy
success either.

------
kup0
I can't seem to get prompted for the new version? Is it rolling out?

~~~
keehun
Same here

~~~
kup0
For the record, I just got it. Must have been rolling out at a certain pace.

------
vincentleeuwen
I didn't know there were still people heading over to Google+...

~~~
jinst8gmi
Maybe they are hoping to impress both of them.

------
jbob2000
So... a reddit-killer?

~~~
rfrank
lol. just like google+ v1 was a facebook killer? ;)

~~~
tdicola
Google+ was a Google Reader killer, and I'm still mad about it.

~~~
rfrank
never really used reader when it was still alive. been using feedly for 6
months or so now and like it a lot, though.

------
angvp
aren't they dropping google+? nobody uses that crap

------
Animats
So they redesigned the web site to look like Windows 8?

~~~
strictnein
So that's why that Google VP of Design hated Windows 10 so much. They had
modeled this on the beautiful Windows 8.

------
shauder
I like Google+ a lot and wish it gained more traction.

~~~
vvpan
How do you use it? I am not even sure what it is...

------
joeevans1000
Google+ is back? This is like where Sigourney Weaver gets into her escape pod
in Alien, only to find the alien there.

------
suyash
UX is terrible for a re-do, It's confusing and the whole layout is out dated.

------
rasz_pl
How about that Youtube comment unbundle? Whats that? you lied? oh ...

------
johnward
Does anyone know what the old google+ looked like?

------
rickmacleod204
lovin the new G+ ...wayyy better than u know who...

also, looks like they've taken some of ello.co 's ideas to heart

~~~
dredmorbius
Which of Ello's ideas?

------
thecrumb
No

------
untilHellbanned
What's most noticeable about this post is the volume of snark that will go
unchecked by the HN cops.

Be slightly critical of any YC company or any other pet subject and you will
get downvoted to oblivion.

------
enahs-sf
I'm still not going to use it. sorry.

