Google Engineer's Internal Rant On Google+ Leaked

42 replies
I stumbled upon this article on a Google Engineer's rant on Google+. Funny how one of the other articles I read mentioned he accidentally shared this memo with the public because he perhaps didn't quite know how to use Google+.

Leaked internal rant highlights Google Plus struggles - CNN.com
#engineer #google #internal #leaked #rant
  • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
    Banned
    ooops. lol.

    60% decrease in traffic since the initial pre-launch surge.
    Not surprising. People (as in real people) have hundreds and thousands of real friends and photos on Facebook. Why would they want to move?
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    • Profile picture of the author yourreviewer
      Originally Posted by sbucciarel View Post

      ooops. lol.

      60% decrease in traffic since the initial pre-launch surge.
      Not surprising. People (as in real people) have hundreds and thousands of real friends and photos on Facebook. Why would they want to move?
      I agree and he makes a great point below,

      "Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that's not why they are successful. Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone. Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars. Some spend all their time on Farmville. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so there's something there for everyone."

      I don't think anyone could have explained it better.
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      • Profile picture of the author kindsvater
        Google executive Eric Schmidt said there is no need for privacy in a Google-world. Why do they need a private employee portal? It should all be public.

        Only fair. That's Google's attitude toward your content it finds, even if you try and keep it private and tell the bots not to spider, cache, retrieve, steal, etc.

        .
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      • Profile picture of the author cenmegasys
        Originally Posted by yourreviewer View Post

        I agree and he makes a great point below,

        "Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that's not why they are successful. Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone. Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars. Some spend all their time on Farmville. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so there's something there for everyone."
        You are right, it will be very hard for Google+ to beat Facebook with what they have, facebook is developed by everyone for different purpose, so unlike google that starts as a company it will be very hard unless its base on opensource.
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    • Profile picture of the author J Bold
      Originally Posted by sbucciarel View Post

      ooops. lol.

      60% decrease in traffic since the initial pre-launch surge.
      Not surprising. People (as in real people) have hundreds and thousands of real friends and photos on Facebook. Why would they want to move?
      I guess Google has managed the opposite of most sites on the web on this one.

      Product launches though, are kind of like pilots of TV series, they may get 20 million viewers on the pilot, but only 5 million are gonna stick around to watch it every week.
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    • Profile picture of the author Rusty Campbell
      Time to stand back and see if they can get it together.
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    • Profile picture of the author JamieSEO
      Originally Posted by sbucciarel View Post

      ooops. lol.

      60% decrease in traffic since the initial pre-launch surge.
      Not surprising. People (as in real people) have hundreds and thousands of real friends and photos on Facebook. Why would they want to move?
      A lot would be due to the loss of the "exclusivity" factor that the pre-launch had. It is amazing how much people want something if you tell them they can't have it :p

      I checked it out pre-launch, but my biggest issues were:
      - Privacy (something that Facebook also had issues with)
      - Lack of value (nothing new)

      The comments made really summed it up for me - Facebook's success lies mostly in the fact they allow devs to create so much unique stuff.

      A good social media platform should be driven by the users!
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  • Profile picture of the author yourreviewer
    In case, anyone is interested in reading the full rant, here it is.

    https://plus.google.com/112678702228...ts/eVeouesvaVX
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Wonder where all those Warriors are now that were trumpeting the end of Facebook when this POS launched?
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      • Profile picture of the author Dan C. Rinnert
        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

        Wonder where all those Warriors are now that were trumpeting the end of Facebook when this POS launched?
        Probably denying they ever said that.
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      • Profile picture of the author athenistic
        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

        Wonder where all those Warriors are now that were trumpeting the end of Facebook when this POS launched?
        So the sky isn't falling? Again?
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      • Profile picture of the author HeySal
        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

        Wonder where all those Warriors are now that were trumpeting the end of Facebook when this POS launched?
        I thought the death of google + threads had already started.
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        • Profile picture of the author jasonl70
          Originally Posted by Black Hat Cat View Post

          Because Myspace was a horrible mess of suckiness. Facebook.....not so much.
          Myspace had a huge user base though... and a ton of them abandoned it, and all of the work they spent creating that "mess of suckiness". People will move on from facebook as well.. maybe not for google+, but I have no doubt that will move on sooner or later.
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  • Profile picture of the author Suthan M
    I saw this in LinkedIn today..

    Seriously- If he was working with Apple or Trump, he would have been fired by now.

    But hey, intentional or not- company secrets or company documents should never ever go public.

    I know a guy who was working with HSBC who went for annual dinner. He left his phone on the table, and another employee stole it but he got caught. 2 weeks later, both got fired.
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  • Profile picture of the author yourreviewer
    You have to give credit to Google though that they have still let this stay on their network.

    Not many companies would have the balls to do that.

    They would have fired the employee and taken down the message.
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  • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
    Banned
    What I find very interesting is that a Google engineer didn't even know how to use Circles so that the post would not be public and that Google execs don't use Google Plus.

    Seems they're very disconnected from their own product.
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    • Profile picture of the author Dan C. Rinnert
      Originally Posted by sbucciarel View Post

      Seems they're very disconnected from their own product.
      Like their CEO?

      To throw one more jab, tech blogs were noting with some degree of snark that Google CEO Eric Schmidt appears to have finally joined Google+ -- more than three months after it was launched.
      Leaked internal rant highlights Google Plus struggles - CNN.com
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    • Profile picture of the author edwood
      Originally Posted by sbucciarel View Post

      Seems they're very disconnected from their own product.
      The quote from Ben Parr at the end of the article says it all...

      "If Google's management truly believed in Google+ as the future of the company, they would be more engaged."


      Michael
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  • Profile picture of the author SamirRastogi
    Google tried to be like Apple when they decided to launch Google+. They felt that by offering an incremental improvement to Facebook they can take over the market just as the iPhone did in the smart phone market. But Google is no Apple and the iPhone was not an incremental improvement.
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    • Profile picture of the author Michael Shook
      I thought this quote was kind of interesting:

      "Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars," he [Yegge] wrote. "Some spend all their time on Farmville. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so there's something there for everyone."

      That part of his opinion seems to be that Facebook is a big time waster and that Google should have followed that path.
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  • Profile picture of the author Joshua Rigley
    Banned
    I read the entire blog post. It was really interesting. So basically G+ failed because it didn't have an API (aka a platform) that enabled people to extend it. Strange, really. These companies are so huge and successful, yet they make stupid mistakes all the time. Kind of like what Netflix is going through now.
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  • Profile picture of the author boxoun
    Why would people want to move from MySpace?
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    • Profile picture of the author Black Hat Cat
      Banned
      Originally Posted by boxoun View Post

      Why would people want to move from MySpace?
      Because Myspace was a horrible mess of suckiness. Facebook.....not so much.
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  • Profile picture of the author robp12
    Google+ isn't "cool".. As a college senior, a bunch of my friends including myself signed up for it this summer. But the last update on my timeline is from July! Young people especially, would rather use Twitter or Facebook over Google+.

    If the product didn't have Google's name attached to it, it would be an absolute failure. With Google's name attached to it, it's nothing more then an average social networking site that doesn't really fulfill a new niche and is a late mover on the scene.
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  • Profile picture of the author crystalq
    Google must be loving this! Look at all of FREE the publicity!!

    I love G+ I hardly see what everones having for dinner and
    only have feeds from other IM People.

    40 Million users is a far cry from a Fail LOL
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    • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
      Banned
      Originally Posted by crystalq View Post

      Google must be loving this! Look at all of FREE the publicity!!

      I love G+ I hardly see what everones having for dinner and
      only have feeds from other IM People.

      40 Million users is a far cry from a Fail LOL
      It's also a far cry from 800M
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    • Profile picture of the author Richard Van
      Originally Posted by crystalq View Post


      40 Million users is a far cry from a Fail LOL
      When you look and the power they yield and the fact that virtually the whole world uses Google daily, I'd actually call that a catastrophic fail.

      Besides, how many of that 40m are actual "users" or just people that signed up thinking it would be the biggest thing since the car was invented, of which this forum would have produced quite a few of?
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      • Profile picture of the author crystalq
        No way that is a catastrophic fail, I mean, you go out and get 40 million users in 3 months! Facebook didn't even do that, they grew over time and Google will too.

        Richard Van: When you look and the power they yield and the fact that virtually the whole world uses Google daily, I'd actually call that a catastrophic fail.

        Besides, how many of that 40m are actual "users" or just people that signed up thinking it would be the biggest thing since the car was invented, of which this forum would have produced quite a few of?
        @Suzanne dont forget that half of those "800 million users" would be fake accounts
        I mean "like services" create hundreds & thousands of fake accounts, out of 800 million users, how many are actual "users" really?

        Who ever, I use and like them both.
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  • Profile picture of the author Guinness1759
    Google doesn't know how to do social. Most of their employees are engineers, and engineers are social retards.
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    • Profile picture of the author boxoun
      Originally Posted by Guinness1759 View Post

      Google doesn't know how to do social. Most of their employees are engineers, and engineers are social retards.
      Zuckerburg is the biggest social retard in this world.

      Gmail is still best although yahoo is catching up. That means they already have built in users. If Google put a home status bar on Google.com, bingo...its right in front of their face instead of being in a tiny corner. They probably don't want to risk their simple design look tho. It can be done. They need to hurry before Facebook figures out true web search.
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  • Profile picture of the author boxoun
    Is linkedin a failure too? Tumbler? Google needs to cater to the "smarter" market who doesn't need to see pics of cats all day long. Facebook continues to make its users hate them. As long as they still have search, they still have a chance. Still early..
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  • Profile picture of the author J Bold
    If you all found the whole rant and read it, you'd see you're not getting the core of what he was saying.

    I just read his whole rant. It was pretty freaking awesome as an insight into Amazon and Google cultures and what really boosted Amazon more than 5 years ago to keep them in a powerful position and save them, basically.

    And he's saying Google needs to change at it's very center in a vital way.

    Go the CNN article. Follow the link to someone who reposted the rant. It's pretty awesome if you have the time.
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  • Profile picture of the author J Bold
    Ok, ok, I'll save you the trouble. Here's the rant in it's entirety, not just a news story about it:

    https://plus.google.com/112678702228...ts/eVeouesvaVX
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  • Profile picture of the author Marcus Demanse
    Epic rant. Kudos to him for taking the time out to compose a constructive criticism, and kudos to Google for letting it stand and not pulling it out. Says a lot about their culture, methinks.
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  • Profile picture of the author Luke Rafferty
    Classic stuff - fairplay to him. although I'd say he is working on some crap email server in Alaska now.
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    • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Luke Rafferty View Post

      Classic stuff - fairplay to him. although I'd say he is working on some crap email server in Alaska now.
      lol .... that's quite possible. The equivalent of being sent to Siberia
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  • Profile picture of the author Geraldm
    The ONLY thing which is going to beat facebook is something which is far superior to facebook and offers what the modern Social networking person wants and needs .....

    Quite frankly, Google+ completely and utterly failed to achieve this.

    Cheers ....
    G.
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  • Profile picture of the author omy123
    I think that the process which Google follows is fair in their Search Engine niche, there should be opacity in there secrets, but talking about the social network, that too made to compete with Facebook, I think need to involve more and more smart brains for sure.. Agreed with Rowan..
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  • Profile picture of the author Karan Goel
    True or not, it's funny!
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  • Profile picture of the author felborfm88
    Thats pretty funny stuff. I don't see Facebook losing any ground to any competitors anytime soon...
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    • Profile picture of the author capitalalchemy
      Google is a machine that runs the humans who built it and try to keep it running.

      The biggest mistake that I have always seen them making is that they try to understand human behavior through just data. If I did this in the IM business I would be screwed.

      I have always felt that they are way out of touch with people and reality, and I think this proves it. Yes, I'm not a fan of FB, but they were smart in creating a community that the users could help shape as well.

      Google has never worked alongside of anyone outside of their offices, so they don't know where to begin with this.

      They've created a line of products in the hopes of making them as human as possible to interact with other humans.

      That's a mistake. They are bypassing the knowledge they need in the process of trying to give us the knowledge that they think we need, by listening to what their "man made" elements tell them.

      I think though that greed is what built Google+.

      I say this because I have made similar mistakes even tough I am much smaller than Google. Every time I have tried to copy what someone else is doing, relied solely on demographics and statistics, or tried to "guess" what I thought people would want - I hit rock bottom.

      You really need to get out there and get involved to be successful in anything, but Google is like that creepy 70 year old version of Howard Hughes, living alone in an apartment at the top of a casino in Vegas, never leaving it's chambers, hair long and ratty, fingernails grotesque, and urinating in milk bottles.............Got carried away again.
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