>Google's Plus feature is an extension of existing Google services with social aspects. It has always been Google, and G+'s information is indeed provided to a staggering number of users.
I don't believe this. Please read this blog post: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/introducing-google-pr...
Then tell me based on the features listed whether Google+ was being portrayed as "an extension of existing Google services with social aspects" or a social network similar to Facebook:
-a way to organize your friends
-video chat
-photo uploads
-location based tagging of posts
-messaging
I'm sorry, but this is basically Facebook circa 2011 with improvements. I don't see a single mention of other google services.
Do you see "facebook" anywhere here? Find in page for it? Do you see any facebook features specifically called out? Just checking. I see a series of basic social features and big sections for G+'s callout features; most notably Hangouts.
> I'm sorry, but this is basically Facebook circa 2011 with improvements. I don't see a single mention of other google services.
This is an interpretation. Your interpretation. I do not mean to be cold, but it seems like a terribly shallow and ill considered interpretation of the situation.
In actuality Google Plus has often been described as a social integration of diverse Google services including Youtube, Profiles, a much more sophisticated realtime video conferencing tool called Hangouts, heavy search integration, and search signal generation. Subsequently it has become the re-definition of "Google Profile" and is basically how Google thinks about user identity, with all major services slowly coming into line with G+.
You can say, "I think that's just Facebook", but that's just you. If Google hasn't said that, you cannot claim they or anyone else is "moving the goalposts." Think whatever you like about G+, what I'm objecting to is your imprecise co-opting of precise terminology for logical fallacies to make a muddy argument about your feelings for this article.
Well that's hideously ingenuous. Literally stating "like Facebook but from Google" is the sort of shit they shoot you for in ad-copy 101.
P.S., I think you meant the opposite of what you said.
And to your point, Google isn't making a facebook play but that is the only metric lots of people are willing to judge them by. I am just trying to drill home the point that it is the poster's interpretation and not Google's stated goal to have a use pattern like Facebook. Google doesn't need that.
Which, to some extent, is fine. I agree with the thesis fo the article that G+ is doing well. And for now, it's one of the best places for hackers to go and socialize off of news sites. It's slowly becoming more tedious as the hapless and advertisers start to realize how valuable it actually is.
Google doesn't really care that much if you use every feature of G+. G+ is a way for them to round up your identity and the search-relevant signals your identity generates into a single funnel so they can make better, more customized search. For example, they get great data if all you ever do is search for something, go there, then +1 an article.
I've worked on search engines, one of them is a major player. The first thing I learned is that there are two big numbers people start with in any given search engine, "Relevance" and "Recall." Recall is the relatively easy part: how many pages related to your search terms come up. Relevance is muddier, and ultimately ties into the very difficult problem of ranking search results. It's fine to have 10m results for "how to throw a fastball" but what you want is the top 10 pages most relevant to the specific user typing in that query.
Generating data to make that judgement is really, really, really involved. And it requires vast swaths of data, not just about you and your preferences but about people like you and their preferences.
Google+ has many upshots for Google, but the single most valuable thing it delivers is a rich source of data to make your searches better. Social cues are the next big data vein people are mining, and it's why social services guard their raw data so jealously. Twitter and Facebook are also doing this, but they live in mortal fear of Google because Google already has a massive search framework to integrate all that data into, and so they receive a lot more value from the data.
Given this situation, some of Google's odd decisions suddenly snap into focus. For example, why is Youtube being migrated to G+? Because those signals are hugely valuable. Why are real names important to Google? Because real identities are grist for the mill of their relevance & ranking engine. Why does their +1 button pop up a reshare dialogue? They're hoping for even more semantic context to associate with a page to improve results.
Ultimately it's up to you to decide if you like this business model. Personally I think Google has more incentive to be honest and to think of the user than Facebook does. Facebook's business model depends on lots of users using Facebook all the time, and so they're going to do whatever they can to trap you in that ecosystem. If they want to improve their profits, they can only do so by further sharing your identity with partners. Google's value propositions are much less direct and much less tied to 24/7 engagement, and they get a lot more value out of anonymized aggregate data.
No. "Moving the Goalposts" is a dishonest technique for arguments by which criterion for sufficiency are continually redefined.
Google has never said, "G+ is Google's Facebook" or anything of the sort. Quite the contrary, they've been clear it's something different from the outset. It's the endless parade of journalists eager to write linkbait stories that have made such comparisons, struggling to put together coherent thoughts on subjects they don't fully understand.
> If you're redefining Google+ as Google, there's no prediction here. Google already has a staggering number of users.
Google's Plus feature is an extension of existing Google services with social aspects. It has always been Google, and G+'s information is indeed provided to a staggering number of users.
But no one has redefined anything, as far as I can see.
What people want to do is paint Google as failing at something because they're simultaneously a very popular and unpopular company right now. Western civilization cherishes novelty, lionizes success, and hates the successful. A perfect storm for making up bullshit about how Google is failing, or stealing your information, or spying on your house.
> I have a couple dozen friends on Google+. There literally hasn't been a single post from one of them in over 4 months. Sometimes companies just fail.
Perhaps you should consider socializing with people on Google Plus before complaining you haven't socialized with people on G+. And maybe for you, G+ just isn't the place to correspond with your immediate friends. That's fine, most of the people I talk to on G+ I only know professionally or remotely, and I find it to be a much richer and less noisy channel than any other option.