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Google Insiders Talk About Why Google+ Failed
An anonymous reader writes in with this story about what happened to Google+ from an employee perspective. "Last month, Google announced that it's changing up its strategy with Google+. In a sense, it's giving up on pitching Google+ as a social network aimed at competing with Facebook. Instead, Google+ will become two separate pieces: Photos and Streams. This didn't come as a surprise — Google+ never really caught on the same way social networks like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn did....Rumors have been swirling for months that Google would change its direction with Google+. Business Insider spoke with a few insiders about what happened to the network that Google believed would change the way people share their lives online. Google+ was really important to Larry Page, too — one person said he was personally involved and wanted to get the whole company behind it. The main problem with Google+, one former Googler says, is the company tried to make it too much like Facebook. Another former Googler agrees, saying the company was 'late to market' and motivated from 'a competitive standpoint.'"
Google Streams of piss ......
How about launching a product and sticking with it for 10 years or more, you fucking clowns?
Nobody in their right mind chooses a Google product as part of their critical infrastructure ..... because Google keeps closing its products down.
They already have too much of my online attention. Sharing anything except my searches with them is a non-starter. It doesn't matter how well implemented the service is. Because it's Google, there's just absolutely no way I'm using it.
I won't even look at files people try to share with me through Google. I just say, "Sorry, I don't use Google drive!" I feel so strongly about it I don't even care if it loses me business or friends.
And when that didn't work, they tried to force it upon all their users, even the ones who didn't want to join in. That is not how you get people to like your product.
Google Answers.
Google Shopping.
Goog-411.
Google Buzz.
Google Wave.
Google Video.
iGoogle.
I don't trust Google to keep it around once it's no longer in Google's best interests to do so and since social networking isn't Google's focus or primary source of revenue, I can't trust that.
It's not that I begrudge them the decision to do what's in their own best interests but I have that same decision to make and Google+ doesn't align with them.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
...the inconsistent Real Names Policy enforcement... ...Eric Schmidt's statement regarding Google+ that "We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it" http://readwrite.com/2010/08/04/google_ceo_schmidt_people_arent_ready_for_the_tech ...and Vic Gundotra's (mis)management and abuse of users who disagree'd with him http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-real-name-clampdown-ignores-own-grace-period/
Despite being a relatively useful service social media service, the misguided personal agendas of the executives running it had killed good will among many early adopter non-Google employee users. Some folks at Google will tell you, under the veil of anonymity, it killed a lot of goodwill amongst Google employees too.
Not that it matters any more, but if you work for Google and wonder why ignored all those invites, it's because you, Google, insisted I change how I share my use of your products as a condition of joining Google+.
Before Google+, I used a variety of your products - blogspot, youtube, search. You know that the same person was using all these services - but the world in general doesn't, and most importantly, none of them were tied to my real name.
Then, to join Google+, you wanted me to "convert" my account, and attach my name to everything.* I was not interested in that, so I diligently stayed away. For Facebook, on the other hand, I knew going in that it would use my real name. (I still waited as long as possible and only signed up to avoid becoming a hermit.) Since I knew my name would be attached from the start, the way in which I share has always been somewhat sanitized.
Because you, Google, are so many things, you can't be a real-name social network, at least if you insist that I retroactively claim ownership over everything else. Sorry.
* Even if this isn't true, this is what I got from all of the media coverage, discussion, and your own promotion. If I understood this all wrong and could have keep using the other services separately and anonymously, then it's your fault for advertising Google+ so badly. That's sort of sad, given that advertising is your business.**
** IIRC they did change this eventually, but by then Google+ was already an obvious failure and it wasn't worth creating an account.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Google's social networking features remain marginal for the same reason all of the other social networking sites remain marginal: the value of a social networking application is proportional to the number of people who are already using it. And Facebook hit critical mass first, which means that anyone who wants to "socialize" online with all of their buddies is going to want to do that on Facebook, because that's where all of their buddies are to be found online.
Asking people to also sign up for a second social-networking service is a losing proposition, because it inconveniences them (now they have to check two sites every day) without providing any compensating benefit (why talk to their friends on site B when they could already do that on site A?).
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
One problem with it was the design. The interface was awful from the beginning. It looked sparse, while at the same time having WAY too much animation. It was so JavaScript-heavy that it wouldn't run on my netbook (4 Gb RAM). They killed off XMPP-integration and then abandoned RSS. There was no API for auto-posting, which increased the difficulty for creating content by people who take social media seriously. Google+ should have been much simpler and cooler. The Android app was (and is) completely obnoxious. Google are generally awful at design and should not try to be innovative with it. I can't stand animation, especially when it tries to be "cute". I stopped using it for those reasons, and I was a supporter in the beginning.
I remember when Google+ first appeared as an "invite only" service. That was just before Facebook made the huge blunder of putting members' faces in ads for any pages they "Liked," suggesting an endorsement. I remember a lot of people everywhere got really angry at Facebook about "faces on ads," and even threatened to leave because of it.
And Google+ remained invite-only. Pretty much no one I knew had an account.
Over the next week, pretty much all you saw in the news was how people wanted to leave Facebook because of the "faces on ads" thing. What an abuse of privacy! You're stealing my image to sell products! There were a bunch of petitions for Facebook to undo the new "faces on ads," or else they would delete their Facebook accounts. The only problem was that there wasn't a viable alternate social network out there. Twitter wasn't really a replacement for how most people used Facebook.
And Google+ still remained invite-only. By then, a few people I knew had accounts, but had run out of invites to share. So few others could get in.
After a few weeks, Facebook decided to calm the storm, and undid "faces on ads." And as expected, people stopped freaking out about Facebook. After another week, even the tech websites stopped writing about "faces on ads."
And finally, Google+ went "live." Anyone could join. I had an account, but few of my other friends bothered to sign up. Why? Because they were still using Facebook, they got over the "faces on ads" fiasco. Without other people to share with, Google+ failed to gain critical mass.
Google+ failed because they didn't know how to respond to the opportunity that Facebook gave them.
Yep, if you want me to participate in an online community in a lasting and meaningful way, there's no way in hell I'm using my real name.
Even worse, Google tried to confuse the issue (i.e. talk out of both sides of its mouth) by drawing a practically meaningless distinction between your "real" name and your common" name. See, your common name is "the name that you commonly go by in daily life," as opposed to your real name which is . . . fuck if I know. IMO, it was intentional double speak so they could claim "it's not actually a real name policy" whenever convenient.
Add to that at least one false start of rescinding the policy (is this one for real? Who knows?), and it's no wonder most of the internet judged them no more trustworthy (and of course potentially far more dangerous) than Facebook.
... the beginning of the end of Google
Everything has a beginning, an end, and a stretch of roller coaster ride in the middle
Google started as a search engine. Larry Page and Co. didn't actually have much more than a search engine in mind when they started Google (and obtained that legendary check from Andy Bechtolsheim
What we are seeing now --- the branching of Google into driverless cars, into Google+, into Youtube (actually they acquired it), and so on --- is but afterthoughts, aka what should we do with all the Billions we got?
Like M$, like Yahoo, like Myspace and so on, Google is on its way down
As for fb, don't worry, it too is on its way down --- as nothing stays up forever
It was clear from the start that what it wanted was your information, they didn't even try to hide it with their real name policy. And for the trouble they didn't really give much more then their competitors were already giving.
Yes, I think it was better from face book, but it didn't seem to have any care for any sort of privacy. So if you are concerned about your private details? Too bad. If you are in an online community that you don't care to share your personal information with? Too bad. Teenagers didn't like it, want to post where your parents won't see? Too bad.
They mentioned that they made a service that was for Google, but not for it's customers, I don't think they really still understood how deep that went. The fact that they started forcing people to join only reenforced the reality of the situation, turning something that had potential into joke.
Maybe someday someone will build a site for people the in the modern internet age, and not just for the corporation that runs it. G+ wasn't even a compromise between the two.
That's totally unfair and a sweeping generalisation to boot.
They only shut down the good ones.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."