I'm sorry, but hearing geeks talk about quitting google as if it's some personal triumph (in nearly every google thread) makes the sentiment seem even more tone deaf and futile.

Sometimes thought leaders need to light the way when issues are not apparent to the masses. I have been saying for a long time that having companies own our identities is a bad idea.

What evidence is there that HN commenters are actually "thought leaders"? That sounds like just the sort of hubris the 4chan thread makes fun of.

Writing us off as "geeks" is absurd. A lot of us are high level developers, architects, consultants, and so on.

So are all of the people who worked on Google+. The notion that anyone here, or any individual at Google, is a thought leader whose own personal use of technology represents where the industry is going just because they're a high level developer seems like narcissism.

I don't think we should be completely written off as "geeks", you're right about that, but it should certainly be acknowledged that we're a small (heavily) biased sample of the general population and our preferences need to be taken with a grain of salt.

> A lot of us are high level developers, architects, consultants, and so on.

Which in the eyes of most people other than those you have listed, makes us geeks. If we're talking about leadership, it isn't so much how we see ourselves that matters, but how others see us.

The public at large doesn't really give a shit if some developers, architects, or consultants want to send a message by deleting their google accounts and refusing to use google services.

They care, it just takes a little longer at times. One day, a person wakes up and realizes that the technophiles are someplace else, all of those blogs, videos and snippets they've been seeing hit home, and they have been personally affected by a real name policy. It starts someplace.

or the technophiles look up and everyone's using whatsapp while we're asking why google isn't using XMPP anymore. This meme needs to die. Sure, gmail rode the wave of the tech-in-crowd to success, but there are far more examples that didn't, or did but went nowhere. If we were actually a good crystal ball it would be a whole lot easier to invest in the market.

What examples might those be? When I look at many products that had the tech-in-crowd blessing and yet failed, often it appeared to be because of lapses in user experience and some humility.

It doesn't require a crystal ball to know when a product solves a problem for users in a way that leaves a good taste in one's mouth.

However, I'm still discovering great products and apps from technophiles who have found solutions to problems that impact me. I've also left detritus behind, not because the awesome folks of HN said it was time, but because of well reasoned thoughts that start here (I tend to favor here) and in other technology springboards.

At the end of the day, I believe that mainstream ultimately wakes up. The kernals for change start small though.

Personally, I don't follow a compass held by just the tech pundits or mainstream - I head toward the smell of good user experience.

HN is legendarily an inward-focused bunch of SV startup-wannabe brogrammers, but it's also a pretty reliable weathervane for where hot technology is heading in the next year or two. And what companies have lost it in the eyes of the very smartest technologists.

> but it's also a pretty reliable weathervane for where hot technology is heading in the next year or two

I have seen very little actual evidence of this, unless we're talking tautological, "all the predictions that came true came true, just ignore the rest", weathervanes. Still waiting on those social-network-based search engines to reign supreme...

oh gosh 4chan talked some shit about us, we better all change our behavior now to meet 4chan's standards

Are you saying your less technical relatives don't ask you for advice on internet matters? And take it?

Exactly! That's how Google got it's popularity in the first place.

dude get off your high horse..

I would be willing to bet that 90% of extremely upset users are using Adblock Plus anyway, and a smaller amount (though significant, in this crowd) use NoScript or something similar to block Google Analytics altogether. It would be basically impossible for Google to even notice their disappearance.

t he alpha geeks have changed from sneakily answering questions with "let me google that for you" to "I've deleted all my googles". self-driving cars and tacky universal soldier glasses don't make up for losing the early adopters.

Same, I deleted Google+ last week so I don't have to look at it. I still use Google for Adsense, Analytics and search. I'm tempted to switch over to DDG, and explore one of the many alternatives for tracking analytics because quite honestly, I'm losing faith in Google to maintain my privacy. Adsense is tougher to replace, I use them for backup fill after selling direct advertising, but they're still one of the better networks.

I wouldn't be surprised if YouTube goes under in the coming years. Someone is going to create an alternative, and hit a homerun. YouTube is primarily about watching videos, and their video player is one of the worst available. Porn sites have offered much better video players for years, so what's holding up Google? It's been seven years, and they still haven't fixed it. Either it's not in their list of priorities, or they're incompetent. I don't care which one it is, they lose my support, and I'm ready to get behind the next alternative that's better in touch with the needs of users.

You are not a target user for google products and services, thats why they are not too worried about how you or users like you feel about it.

See also: Facebook. A lot of noise was made about facebook privacy (inside the HN and other tech eco chambers) and a lot of noise was made about people quitting facebook because of privacy. But in reality probably only .00000001% of facebook users probably quit because of privacy reasons, which is probably a drop in a bucket compare to the amount of new users they get everyday.

Google is doing this because they can. They are in a market dominant position with both youtube and Google search that they can afford to make decision, which in hindsight might not be popular with some users, but will close to nothing to harm their bottom line.

> But in reality probably only .00000001% of facebook users probably quit because of privacy reasons, which is probably a drop in a bucket compare to the amount of new users they get everyday.

Normalization is a tricky job. Your assumption is that the entire set of users were aware of privacy problems with Facebook. Out of the universal set of Facebook users, there would be two subsets - people aware of privacy problems and their ill effects and people who don't. You should check "how many people quit (or significantly reduced activity on) Facebook, once they found out about privacy issues and their effects" and then report the percentage.

It will harm the bottom line. When user experience isn't taken seriously, the effects will be felt - yes at the bottom line. Facebook is now admitting it has a problem in the "cool" teen department. Because of Facebook's privacy blunders, it has put itself in the spotlight whenever a change is needed to the ToS, DUP, or Privacy Policy. Does anyone really think that it costs Facebook less to deal with these issues (dollars and time)? Google will not be an exception. Someone, will come along and fill in the gap to make their marketing costs even more interesting.

Except Facebook is losing users in developed economies now. The recent talk has been about them milking the property for short term profitability, because they know it's doomed in the long term.

Anecdata: I know that a LOT of my friends have quit Facebook (or just stopped visiting) over privacy concerns and dissatisfaction with the UX.

From google's perspective, you (and other HNers) most likely belong to the tiny techie minority who would have blocked ads anyway. So you quitting the service wouldn't make much difference to their revenue stream.