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Larry Page Issues Public Update On Google Changes
itwbennett writes "Larry Page just wants to be loved. Well, he wants 'Google to be a company that is deserving of great love,' Page wrote in a public letter. But he also wants to offer the kind of personalized service that the requires trampling on your privacy. 'The recent changes we made to our privacy policies generated a lot of interest. But they will enable us to create a much better, more intuitive experience across Google — our key focus for the year,' Page wrote."
From the letter: "Think about basic actions like sharing or recommendations. When you find a great article, you want to share that knowledge with people who will find it interesting, too. If you see a great movie, you want to recommend it to friends. Google+ makes sharing super easy by creating a social layer across all our products so users connect with the people who matter to them." With all the claims of altruistic intent in the open letter, one might wonder why Google has to push their own social network instead of working on open protocols for sharing.
I'm not really a Google fan. I deleted quite a lot of my information when they announced the privacy policy change. I don't use Google+.
But, really, "why didn't Google work on Diaspora"? Give me a break.
hell even G+ is forcing crap at us all the time. Larry, remember why Google became great in the first place - it had an unobtrusive search page that was not filled to bursting with flashing banners and adverts.
So why does Google+ homepage insist on sticking a "what's hot" crap across the stream of stuff I've decided I want to see? Why is there a 'best of' G+ banner that you can't turn off?
Tell you what Larry, turn on location services on your phone so we can all see exactly where you are all the time, and open your email so we can see everything you're doing. Even just show us the feed of 'personalisations' that Google is accumulating based on your browsing, email and G+ activities.
Then we can talk privacy.
Actually, I think there would be for Google. I'd argue that they should be concentrating on keeping the web from being swallowed up by huge sites like Facebook, which will develop their own advertising and revenue streams. If they supported an open platform for social networking, it's more likely that the landscape would comprise a bunch of smaller players--who would get their revenue through Google ads.
I think this is essentially their strategy with Android. It's a better strategy than going into direct competition with Facebook, which has got them--and will continue to get them--nowhere.
Open protocols don't help when everyone stops making webpages and moves to Facebook, which isn't publicly crawlable. Remember when everyone wanted their OWN website, and websites linked meaningfully to other websites, and there was a whole ecosystem of small, independent webpages with information on a crazy number of niche topics, and everyone's webpage had links to other webpages that they thought were cool? That doesn't really exist anymore. THAT web is dead. If Wikipedia and Craigslist, and a dozen other silo-type sites are all that's left to crawl (if they decide to let Google do it), how important is Google, really? The web has changed, and Google had to change or die with it. Google+ is just Google's attempt at taking what's left of the public, open web and internalize it (and make it all 'social' content mostly not publicly crawlable, ironically). So yeah, the (open) web really is dead, or will be soon.
"Is this just useless, or is it expensive as well?"
Don't Look Evil
Eh, that's close enough.
The "What's Hot" was initially annoying but once they added the "volume sliders" to it so that you could just drop the volume to 0 (which says "Show nothing from What's hot in your stream") the problem went away. They do still have a fairly rapid rate of change on G+.
If you haven't already set that slider, click the "What's Hot" link on the left panel of G+ below the "Stream" section. It will show a volume slider in the center area near the top. Slide that all the way to the left, then click back to your stream. Problem solved!