Google+ hasn’t been getting much love from users in recent days–its traffic reportedly plummeted 60 percent from its peak–but the most damning criticism seems to be coming from Google itself.
A post penned by Google engineer Steve Yegge has surfaced and in it, the software engineer trashes Google+ as a “pathetic afterthought” and “knee-jerk reaction.”
Yegge describes Google+ as “a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product.”
0
Support the Blog — Buy This Book!
For Kindle and with free ePub version. Only $9.49 Great reading.
Here is what Gary Shapiro CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) said: Dvorak's writing sings with insight and clarity. Whether or not you agree with John's views, he will get you thinking and is never boring. These essays are worth the read!
Put this ad on your blog!
Syndicate
Subscribe to Main Blog feed here:
Subscribe to Comments too (below):
Junk Email Filter
Home run: “…Google’s mistake was to attempt to “predict what people want and deliver it for them,” …” – not only about Google+ but about whole recent Google strategy.
Yea, keep that Facebook account because it’s so important for your friends and Feds to amass all those pics of you drinking and what not.
I miss the good old days of black corded phones hanging on the kitchen wall. Yes I have grey hair.
I think G+ is a huge improvement over FB. It’s much more efficient and reliable.
When FB goes public, it’ll soon suck like you won’t believe, and G+ will rake in users like crazy!
I found absolutely nothing compelling about G+ (or FB for that matter) that would make me move to that social network over the one I’m already part of with all my friends and contacts.
Google has once again made something for the sheep-like technorati to jump on and then abandon just like Wave and any number of other projects they throw against the wall in recent memory.
You can’t just create something and expect it will work. FB is so popular and widespread because it evolved gradually into what people wanted bar the privacy fiascos every 3 months. If it just appeared overnight like G+ it would have been the same story as Google is now seeing.
Google need to just stick at what they’re good at, ripping off open source code from others (android), and being the world’s largest advertising company (once you realise thats ALL google is things make a lot of sense).
G+ would be fine if it didn’t assume that all the content on my phone was available for it to upload to their servers. I paid for my phone and my content and I own all the rights to my phone, and some rights to the software on it to use and some usage rights for the media. I also have responsibilities to my family and friends not to distribute personal videos and content which they entrust to me not to post willynilly online. G+ on my android did that and now I just don’t feel like my phone is private anymore.
Since I use G+, it means going back to my non-networked mp4 player for some privacy… however, in Google’s favor, I don’t trust Facebook with my private things either. But they don’t reach into my phone and pilfer my stuff.
people are lazy and google is simply too late with their product.
it took years to finally hook up with nearly everyone I know and knew during my younger years.
does google really believe people give that all up and take the time & effort to switch because their product has one or two cool features facebook doesn’t (yet) have. back when myspace faltered people where still undecided and spread widely across different social media networks. but that battle is long settled and done.
once you realize everyone’s on board, as with google’s search engine years ago, it just makes no sense to offer an alternative when no one wants or needs one (take iPod vs. Zune as an example). sometimes I wonder who decides to invest in these things. If I were the CEO of Google and someone tried to convince me to make a better facebook I would kick him in the nuts and fire his ass.
I think Google plus is a huge improvement over Facebook. It is much more efficient and reliable.
The challenge for Google+ is they’re fighting the social network equivalent of Metcalfe’s law.
They needed something truly compelling to get users to break away from FB. Something a little better is not good enough, they needed a 10X factor involvement which they will never get.
Perhaps Steve Yegge may soon become an ex Google employee
Unlime Microsoft, Google has a policy where emloyees cannot talk negatively about the company even outside their workhours.
If Google+ is such a fail, why did FB copy so many of its features?
Its likely that they had a couple of the things they ‘copied’ under way anyway, but you have to look at it the OTHER way.
Pretty much EVERYTHING about G+ was copied from FB, just tweaked a tiny bit.
You know, the way google innovates normally.
Yeah, I got an invite and ended up joining. It’s been about a week now and I can report that absolutely fucking nothing is going on with Google+.
Which is OK because I’m under no pressure to check out my page.
You have to DO something on G+ in order to GET something from it. Same with facebook and twitter. But with that said, I don’t really feel like doing anything with G+
I hardly look at Facebook, let alone G+. I read or browse other discussion groups instead like the Bad Astronomy and Chris Pirillo websites.
They also fail to mention that you have to be INVITED to use G+ you can’t just “walk in” and join like Facebook and Twitter.
Hmmm, mutli-thread still stucks, but a sane, chronological order might make it usable.
G+ requires a real name which makes it a non-starter. The only reason I have a gmail address is for my Android phone. I tried to set up a throaway gmail account the other day and they won’t activate it without a working phone number which makes it difficult to create an anonymous email account also. This severely limits the usefulness of gmail as well.
Yup, yup, another failure as reported by tech elitists with no numbers to back the whine.
Meanwhile, Google’s audited quarterly report yesterday reported passing the 40 million subscription mark for Google+.
And save the teary whines about usage vs. subscribed. That’s true of all services.