Google Plus

[naum]

An interesting rant about Google's problem with building platforms. I've been figuring that G+ was a need basic building block that they would use for all of their other apps, but it sounds like that may not be the case. It does seem like sharing in Reader should have been folded into G+ by this point. It will be interesting to see what the social app world will look like next year.

I was just coming here to post this. Fascinating post, really.

I didn't find anything earth shattering about it -- it's a rant that just about any developer / programmer could issue, in frustations working for any $BigCompany.

That said, it sure does sound like Google doesn't know what it wants to be, that Amazon, Apple and others have much more coherent company telos.

[Strazos]

I don't know why you're all so worried about people you don't like on FB...couldn't you just NOT friend them?

[Xuri]

Too much drama.

[Ironwood]

An interesting rant about Google's problem with building platforms. I've been figuring that G+ was a need basic building block that they would use for all of their other apps, but it sounds like that may not be the case. It does seem like sharing in Reader should have been folded into G+ by this point. It will be interesting to see what the social app world will look like next year.

I was just coming here to post this. Fascinating post, really.

I didn't find anything earth shattering about it -- it's a rant that just about any developer / programmer could issue, in frustations working for any $BigCompany.

That said, it sure does sound like Google doesn't know what it wants to be, that Amazon, Apple and others have much more coherent company telos.

No, I disagree with you.  It IS a fascinating post and it pretty much encapsulates what's needed to succeed in the post dot-com world.  I found that reallllllly thought provoking when you start considering the idea of Service across any other business.

[slog]

Google needs some of Apple's focus on making things that just work for the customer. 

[UnsGub]

Google's UIs have not progress passed a text field with a button.

Hiring smart people does not mean you get the right people.

[Margalis]

Google needs some of Apple's focus on making things that just work for the customer. 

According to that post part of their problem is that they are trying to make products for the customer rather than platforms that other people can use to make products for the customer.

Google+ in itself is not terrible but it also has no APIs that you can use to add apps or extend the functionality it any way.

[Ingmar]

Google needs some of Apple's focus on making things that just work for the customer. 

Actually, I think they have the exact opposite problem. They focus so hard on making things that 'just work' that they leave out stuff people want/need, like being able to choose your font size in Chrome as the article points out, or being able to sort at all in the Gmail web client.

[Ironwood]

Yeah, the problem they have it sticking to a 'vision' without any nod at all to whether or not anyone actually cares to share it.

[Sky]

I loved the bit about not being arrogant while trying to stab into platforms in a totally ham-fisted way with a sliver of the features of the industry leaders and then getting offended when you don't get all wild-eyed koolaid all over them and bust through a wall.

Decent mail, though I use a client because I like sorting. Better than our IMAP UI, though. Calendar is pretty nice, probably my favorite app. Maps is also useful. If they stop adding doodads to the basic search, that's also solid.

Aaand that's it. Docs etc blows goats. Caveman smearing charcoal on a wall next to MS's renaissance painters. Hell, half the stuff I did in Fireworks I'm doing in Word now, ffs.

Working with a tech-wannabe who is absolutely religious about google docs doesn't help much. I think it's infringing on his mac cultism. Maybe it's a similar phenomenon, they can be all martyr that people just don't get it or something.

[Xanthippe]

I like Google Docs for the word processor and spreadsheet.  For my needs, I find MS Word to be bloated with features; ditto Excel.  I don't even like that MS Word Lite thing that comes in Office Lite.  Best part of it for me though, is being able to access anything I'm working on from any computer.

Working with a tech-wannabe who is absolutely religious about google docs doesn't help much. I think it's infringing on his mac cultism. Maybe it's a similar phenomenon, they can be all martyr that people just don't get it or something.

I suspect it's his personality.

[Ironwood]

I've been in IT all my life and I find people who have a 'fascination' of one company or tech over another utterly baffling.  I've always been about 'I want it to do something, does it do it ?'

People who try to proselytise over products just annoy the fuck out of me, unless it's a product that's so good it's worth a gush.

[Arthur_Parker]

I just hate anything that doesn't have file and edit menus, even though it needs them.  No, I don't want to learn your new method, I really don't care enough.

[naum]

I've been in IT all my life and I find people who have a 'fascination' of one company or tech over another utterly baffling.  I've always been about 'I want it to do something, does it do it ?'

When I started, it wasn't called IT, it was "Data Processing", then "Systems".

Problem with Google is that they're so scattershot -- most of their products simply languish, even if they are decent. For example, Google Reader is by the far, the most robust RSS reader (and in large part, due to its "built-in" search function), but outside of a few frivolous "social" features, it's basically same product it was in 2005. And there's still no public API (but a lot of developers have tapped into the "unofficial" undocumented API) and missing features that would be simple to add.

I know this isn't the Steve Jobs eulogy thread, but Jobs is akin to Disney more than tech luminaries -- for multiple hits -- the early Apple/Mac, iPod, then iPhone/iPad.

[Quinton]

Google Docs is kinda "office software lite" in some ways, but the collaborative bits can be super handy.  I use it for small design docs, drawing simple flow diagrams (client/server interactions, etc), and like that it's easy to share, it's versioned, etc.  Like all Web 2.0 stuff it pains me how inefficient it is computing-resource-wise.  Compare Lotus 123 1A on a 10MHZ PC XT and Google Spreadsheets on a 3GHz multicore modern PC.  Ugh.  The browser is such an absurdly inefficient place to implement applications. ^^

It means I don't need OpenOffice (ugh) or MSOffice (I don't run Windows) though and for that I'm grateful

[Sky]

Office 2011 is pretty wicked.

[Yegolev]

Reinstalling Office 2010 today reminded they have some sort of online function.  I might poke at it.  Google Docs is third-world software.

[Sky]

Yeah, they're making a big push for collaboration tools.

[Ingmar]

I like Google Docs for the word processor and spreadsheet.  For my needs, I find MS Word to be bloated with features; ditto Excel. 

Yeah this is the fundamental Microsoft approach; think of anything anyone might ever possibly think they might someday need, and throw it in (also move the menus around every other version). Whereas what Google tries to do is strip everything out down to the bare bones, thinking most people don't need all that extra stuff - which is mostly true, but the problem is, every person probably eventually wants at least one or two of the things that, say, Word offers that Google Docs doesn't. Multiply all those tiny disappointments out across millions of users and you're actually looking at quite a lot of user dissatisfaction in total.

[caladein]

Google Docs' word processing side sits in this weird space for me.  I can't use it for anything serious because of those one or two missing features so I have to boot up LibreOffice.  But on the other end of the spectrum, if I'm writing down something small like a drycoded macro or some notes, it's a lot faster just to go into Notepad++.  The word processor just sits in the middle space where I don't use it more than once a quarter or so now.

My spreadsheet needs are all in that middle though so I use it a lot.

[Zetor]

We use Office 2010 at work simply because it is the only decent word processor software that allows multiple people to edit a document at the same time (via Sharepoint).

[Ironwood]

How does it handle conflicts ?

[Zetor]

We usually work on different sections of the same document, which helps with that conflict thing

Other than that, it locks paragraphs being edited by someone else who hasn't committed their changes yet. If you still want to commit a change to the area where someone else has made a change recently (this has happened maybe... twice so far), it pops up some kind of conflict resolution dialog box on the screen of the guy committing the 'bad' change.

There are a few annoying things with the entire sharepoint setup (we still dread doing the "update all fields" operation when we're finished with a doc; it can explode in strange and interesting ways!), but it's still far better than having to redo 200 cross-references after merging 3 separate documents together.

[Ingmar]

Sharepoint actually has some pretty slick version control stuff, yeah. You can force check in/check out, minor/major versions with approval, etc. etc.

[Ironwood]

Yeah, I'm in the strange position where I sell it as part of Office365, but I don't use it heavily myself.  I really ought to change that dynamic one way or another.

[tazelbain]

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/google-will-get-new-features-and-new-users-executive-says/

So, pseudonyms in the works.

[01101010]

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/google-will-get-new-features-and-new-users-executive-says/

So, pseudonyms in the works.

So this is the "it is still young!! give it time to develop!" argument? So expect the word niche to come up very shortly.

[Quinton]

For those of you with me in their circles, if you're confused that I appear to be adding you again, it's due to me migrating from an old test gmail account to the account I *should* have been using for this from the beginning.  Apologies for the clutter.  If you're still using G+, feel free to unfollow my old account (which now has an "i have moved" avatar) which will be going away before long.

[Xuri]

I like your old account better, so I'll follow that one too. 

[Tale]

I asked myself "why am I using this? Do I need it? If I came back later would it matter that I hadn't been there all along?". The answer was to delete it. I'm on Facebook, twitter and gmail. It's been a month or two now and I've forgotten G+ even exists.

[Ironwood]

Yup.

This is my view also.

[Margalis]

I use Google+ to speak to a handful of other people about a project we are working on together. That's it.

If Google doesn't want G+ to die a quick death they really have to act fast.

[01101010]

I use Google+ to speak to a handful of other people about a project we are working on together. That's it.

If Google doesn't want G+ to die a quick death they really have to act fast.

I suspect that ship has sailed... directly for the reef that sank Buzz.

[Margalis]

I really would love to be a fly on the wall at Google.

Do people there think that this is going well or are they flipping their lids?

[Paelos]

Every big company eventually over-extends. This was it.