I work at Google, have done for about 7 years now. This is my first comment at HN.
I think your comment about "not coercive" is insightful. The biggest change I've seen over time here is that at the start, people never talked about what users should or should not do. They were treated as people who would use our products, or not, and that was A-OK.
The subtle trend that underlies a lot of this recent outpouring of dismay is that these days, this view has changed. It's not about chasing profit (it's still extremely rare at Google to see anything approaching a budget). It's not about being evil. It's that these days users are increasingly treated as if they were sheep that need to be herded around.
This trend is evidence in many different ways. The big push for Google+ comes from Larry's fear of Facebook. He got really scared a few years ago that Facebook was going to "win" in any area they competed in, simply through being social, regardless of how good their actual product was. Photos was taken as the canonical example: Facebook Photos was inferior in almost every way to PicasaWeb but it won handily in terms of market share because it was social (or so the theory goes). Messaging seemed similar, surveys showed the younger generation didn't use email anymore, it was all on Facebook. So at the time it was thought that Facebook were going to take on every one of Google's core products and win, simply through having the social graph. So that fear drove the massive investment in Google+ and the desire to win at any cost.
Of course this strategy has not worked, as was predictable. Google+ is an excellent social network, but people already had one and didn't care to change. Also, the threat from Facebook has never really seemed to materialise in the huge way Larry thought it would.
Unfortunately this fear drove a long series of mental rationalisations. People would use Google+, employees were told, because it would be good for them. They might not realise it now, but Google+ would make everything better, and that's why it's so important that they all sign up. Real Names might be unpopular to start with, but then people would realise the benefits and they'd all be happy.
The same thinking has driven a bunch of other problems. That damn red alerting bell that Google+ users all get? It can't be switched off, rationale: "if we allow users to switch it off because it's too noisy, after we fix that they won't switch it back on and then they'd end up in a worse state. It's really better for people in the long term that there be no way to disable it".
Unfortunately Larry is so committed to this fear-driven social strategy that he can't mentally accept that a large population of users is never going to be excited about or use Google+. For him, if Google+ loses, Google itself will become entirely irrelevant a short time later. It's literally an existential crisis. This places Vic in a very powerful position where he's able to get whatever he wants, and pushback from the lower ranks is ignored in order to seem to be making progress with this "better for the users" social integration.
I guess YouTube comments are a good recent example of this. Presumably someone at the bottom of the YouTube org understood that removing character limits and allowing links would immediately cause floods of spam, but the "social is better" meme is now so unmoveable amongst management that these sorts of practical considerations (which would once have been the dominant factor in decision making) get tossed aside.
I don't know if Google will change, but unless Larry wakes up and realises Facebook isn't going to kill his business, I think it will continue down the current path for a long time yet.
Wasn't this "fear- driven strategy" of aggressive paranoia (I hate to use the word here because it has a strongly negative connotation when such paranoia may be entirely warranted) a hallmark of the aggressive and tech expansionist culture of... Microsoft?
This is the upshot and downside of companies with ambitions that are essentially limitless:
When you treat EVERYTHING as an opportunity, you inevitably come to see EVERYTHING as a potential threat.
I think your comment about "not coercive" is insightful.
Thanks. That's one of the biggest changes I've seen. Your comments are interesting (of course, no way to know if you are who you claim to be, though, similarly for myself).
Larry's fear of Facebook.
I've written multiple times on G+ why Google should be focused on Amazon, not FB. Social is ultimately ephemeral. The evaporative cooling effect always kicks in. Given G+'s lack of effective filtering, sooner there than elsewhere. I've posted far too often to Shimrit Ben-Yair (G+'s product manager) on aspects of this.
The other trend I see is self-hosting / distributed services becoming viable. See FreedomBox as an example. A few years off yet, but it'll be a game-changer.
That damn red alerting bell
One of the first things that lead me to segregate my G+ activities from "everything else I do on the Web". I've actually removed the bell via user-side CSS (repeatedly, thanks to repeated CSS class-name changes) from other Google properties. I ultimately found it was easier to 1) not use them when logged in (so: in another browser/session), or 2) use other services (DDG, OpenStreetMaps, FixYT.com / Vimeo, etc.).
if Google+ loses, Google itself will become entirely irrelevant a short time later.
He's wrong. However if he keeps cramming G+ down peoples' throats, he'll keep encouraging exploration of other servcies. Particularly among the more technically literate and thought leaders.
I don't know if Google will change, but unless Larry wakes up and realises Facebook isn't going to kill his business, I think it will continue down the current path for a long time yet.
Sad. In particular, even FB doesn't suffer disadvantage that it's sucking so much else of my information online (mail, video, search), though FB itself is pretty invasive (NB: I don't have a personal Facebook account).
As others have noted, the fear-driven strategy is highly reminiscent of Microsoft, and is among the factors which killed Microsoft's brand among end-users (the OEMs and business partners loved them so long as the money kept flowing).
If we assume that Larry and his execs are fairly smart, then what is their rationale for pushing G+? I think they figured that G+ is just like FB, so no one would have a problem with it. All that social data can only improve Google's services. And G+ blunts any advantage that FB has. All good things. The downside is that people (particularly devs) hate when their existing services change. Also, G+ has never offered a compelling reason to switch, and few people are going to manage 2 identical social networking accounts. Google will have to build/buy something great, as they did with Maps & Mail, to attract users to G+. Otherwise, it's Buzz and Orkut all over again.
Interesting, given that the original article makes the point about Steve Jobs' advice.
Apple is a company that famously suggests and pushes people into how it thinks things should be done.
From what you are saying, Larry seems to have heard that advice (which when I first read it I took to be about focus, not profit) and heard "push your users down a particular path".
Moving from a "free to do it your way" model to a "best if you do it our way" model is undoubtably going to cause a lot of grief to long-time Google users. In a similar vein that explains the upset about "moving" stuff from AOSP to Play Services.
The growing up of google felt like story line of Starwar.
Judi night grew up and felt the power of the dark side.
:-)
Also remind me of another line: If you're young and you're not a Democrat, you don't have a heart. If you're old and you're a Republican, you don't have a brain.
Given that Microsoft's primary threat right now is from SAAS / PAAS and browser-based, OS-independent tools, I'd say Microsoft's fear of Netscape was well-founded. Its error was in thinking that it could dispatch that threat by killing off the competitor. To borrow an overused metaphor, the problem wasn't Al Qaeda, but terrorism. It wasn't the specific competitor, but the technology and development model it represented.
And much in the same way: you can't really defeat a technology. As we now see with Microsoft, very slowly, responding to the threat by providing its own offerings, despite the considerable revenue threat this creates for the company. As with other fallen tech giants, it's turning increasingly to patent revenues and other forms of extractive revenue rather than productive activities.
"But I also believed Microsoft was exaggerating his fears of Netscape."
Microsoft is still in the same position as it was pre-Netscape. It still effectively owns the OS and office software markets. It just wasn't entirely able to take over a couple of new markets.
That failure was pretty bad: MS is no longer seen as a "hot new thing", or a producer of hot new things. But in terms of doing damage to Microsoft, nothing from outside MS has done anything, as far as I can see. (Antitrust lawsuits notwithstanding.)
You got a point (I upvoted you). But Netscape is not in the same position as it was pre-Microsoft. We can't know what would have happened, had Netscape survived.
Strangely, if Facebook decided to do a web search product, they could put a serious dent in the engine that powers Google. However to date it isn't something they are interested in.
I would question whether it is a matter of their not being interested in it vs. Their being interested in it but not having a compelling search product... yet
Comments
I work at Google, have done for about 7 years now. This is my first comment at HN.
I think your comment about "not coercive" is insightful. The biggest change I've seen over time here is that at the start, people never talked about what users should or should not do. They were treated as people who would use our products, or not, and that was A-OK.
The subtle trend that underlies a lot of this recent outpouring of dismay is that these days, this view has changed. It's not about chasing profit (it's still extremely rare at Google to see anything approaching a budget). It's not about being evil. It's that these days users are increasingly treated as if they were sheep that need to be herded around.
This trend is evidence in many different ways. The big push for Google+ comes from Larry's fear of Facebook. He got really scared a few years ago that Facebook was going to "win" in any area they competed in, simply through being social, regardless of how good their actual product was. Photos was taken as the canonical example: Facebook Photos was inferior in almost every way to PicasaWeb but it won handily in terms of market share because it was social (or so the theory goes). Messaging seemed similar, surveys showed the younger generation didn't use email anymore, it was all on Facebook. So at the time it was thought that Facebook were going to take on every one of Google's core products and win, simply through having the social graph. So that fear drove the massive investment in Google+ and the desire to win at any cost.
Of course this strategy has not worked, as was predictable. Google+ is an excellent social network, but people already had one and didn't care to change. Also, the threat from Facebook has never really seemed to materialise in the huge way Larry thought it would.
Unfortunately this fear drove a long series of mental rationalisations. People would use Google+, employees were told, because it would be good for them. They might not realise it now, but Google+ would make everything better, and that's why it's so important that they all sign up. Real Names might be unpopular to start with, but then people would realise the benefits and they'd all be happy.
The same thinking has driven a bunch of other problems. That damn red alerting bell that Google+ users all get? It can't be switched off, rationale: "if we allow users to switch it off because it's too noisy, after we fix that they won't switch it back on and then they'd end up in a worse state. It's really better for people in the long term that there be no way to disable it".
Unfortunately Larry is so committed to this fear-driven social strategy that he can't mentally accept that a large population of users is never going to be excited about or use Google+. For him, if Google+ loses, Google itself will become entirely irrelevant a short time later. It's literally an existential crisis. This places Vic in a very powerful position where he's able to get whatever he wants, and pushback from the lower ranks is ignored in order to seem to be making progress with this "better for the users" social integration.
I guess YouTube comments are a good recent example of this. Presumably someone at the bottom of the YouTube org understood that removing character limits and allowing links would immediately cause floods of spam, but the "social is better" meme is now so unmoveable amongst management that these sorts of practical considerations (which would once have been the dominant factor in decision making) get tossed aside.
I don't know if Google will change, but unless Larry wakes up and realises Facebook isn't going to kill his business, I think it will continue down the current path for a long time yet.
Wasn't this "fear- driven strategy" of aggressive paranoia (I hate to use the word here because it has a strongly negative connotation when such paranoia may be entirely warranted) a hallmark of the aggressive and tech expansionist culture of... Microsoft?
This is the upshot and downside of companies with ambitions that are essentially limitless:
When you treat EVERYTHING as an opportunity, you inevitably come to see EVERYTHING as a potential threat.
I think your comment about "not coercive" is insightful.
Thanks. That's one of the biggest changes I've seen. Your comments are interesting (of course, no way to know if you are who you claim to be, though, similarly for myself).
Larry's fear of Facebook.
I've written multiple times on G+ why Google should be focused on Amazon, not FB. Social is ultimately ephemeral. The evaporative cooling effect always kicks in. Given G+'s lack of effective filtering, sooner there than elsewhere. I've posted far too often to Shimrit Ben-Yair (G+'s product manager) on aspects of this.
The other trend I see is self-hosting / distributed services becoming viable. See FreedomBox as an example. A few years off yet, but it'll be a game-changer.
That damn red alerting bell
One of the first things that lead me to segregate my G+ activities from "everything else I do on the Web". I've actually removed the bell via user-side CSS (repeatedly, thanks to repeated CSS class-name changes) from other Google properties. I ultimately found it was easier to 1) not use them when logged in (so: in another browser/session), or 2) use other services (DDG, OpenStreetMaps, FixYT.com / Vimeo, etc.).
if Google+ loses, Google itself will become entirely irrelevant a short time later.
He's wrong. However if he keeps cramming G+ down peoples' throats, he'll keep encouraging exploration of other servcies. Particularly among the more technically literate and thought leaders.
I don't know if Google will change, but unless Larry wakes up and realises Facebook isn't going to kill his business, I think it will continue down the current path for a long time yet.
Sad. In particular, even FB doesn't suffer disadvantage that it's sucking so much else of my information online (mail, video, search), though FB itself is pretty invasive (NB: I don't have a personal Facebook account).
As others have noted, the fear-driven strategy is highly reminiscent of Microsoft, and is among the factors which killed Microsoft's brand among end-users (the OEMs and business partners loved them so long as the money kept flowing).
If we assume that Larry and his execs are fairly smart, then what is their rationale for pushing G+? I think they figured that G+ is just like FB, so no one would have a problem with it. All that social data can only improve Google's services. And G+ blunts any advantage that FB has. All good things. The downside is that people (particularly devs) hate when their existing services change. Also, G+ has never offered a compelling reason to switch, and few people are going to manage 2 identical social networking accounts. Google will have to build/buy something great, as they did with Maps & Mail, to attract users to G+. Otherwise, it's Buzz and Orkut all over again.
Interesting, given that the original article makes the point about Steve Jobs' advice.
Apple is a company that famously suggests and pushes people into how it thinks things should be done.
From what you are saying, Larry seems to have heard that advice (which when I first read it I took to be about focus, not profit) and heard "push your users down a particular path".
Moving from a "free to do it your way" model to a "best if you do it our way" model is undoubtably going to cause a lot of grief to long-time Google users. In a similar vein that explains the upset about "moving" stuff from AOSP to Play Services.
Remember "Don't be evil".
The growing up of google felt like story line of Starwar.
Judi night grew up and felt the power of the dark side. :-)
Also remind me of another line: If you're young and you're not a Democrat, you don't have a heart. If you're old and you're a Republican, you don't have a brain.
Google has "mature" now. :-)
Interesting. It seems that Google is switching from an "attract" to a "protect" strategy. Which is, IMO, short-sighted.
...unless Larry wakes up and realises Facebook isn't going to kill his business
Or is it? Actually I agree with you. But I also believed Microsoft was exaggerating his fears of Netscape. Now I don't know what to think.
Maybe it's better to err on the side of paranoia after all.
Given that Microsoft's primary threat right now is from SAAS / PAAS and browser-based, OS-independent tools, I'd say Microsoft's fear of Netscape was well-founded. Its error was in thinking that it could dispatch that threat by killing off the competitor. To borrow an overused metaphor, the problem wasn't Al Qaeda, but terrorism. It wasn't the specific competitor, but the technology and development model it represented.
And much in the same way: you can't really defeat a technology. As we now see with Microsoft, very slowly, responding to the threat by providing its own offerings, despite the considerable revenue threat this creates for the company. As with other fallen tech giants, it's turning increasingly to patent revenues and other forms of extractive revenue rather than productive activities.
"But I also believed Microsoft was exaggerating his fears of Netscape."
Microsoft is still in the same position as it was pre-Netscape. It still effectively owns the OS and office software markets. It just wasn't entirely able to take over a couple of new markets.
That failure was pretty bad: MS is no longer seen as a "hot new thing", or a producer of hot new things. But in terms of doing damage to Microsoft, nothing from outside MS has done anything, as far as I can see. (Antitrust lawsuits notwithstanding.)
You got a point (I upvoted you). But Netscape is not in the same position as it was pre-Microsoft. We can't know what would have happened, had Netscape survived.
Strangely, if Facebook decided to do a web search product, they could put a serious dent in the engine that powers Google. However to date it isn't something they are interested in.
I would question whether it is a matter of their not being interested in it vs. Their being interested in it but not having a compelling search product... yet