I honestly don't understand whats wrong with this. It just seems like the natural progression of the services that Google already provides. If my friend searches for a new phone, they should see my public reviews of the phones. Friends reviews should be made front and center because reviews from people we know are always more valuable. The way the page reads, it seems they will only use your reviews in ads for friends, I think that's fair, but if they use it for strangers too then I'll probably opt out.
Me neither. It seems perfectly consonant with Google's entire MO, and not in any way out of line with the implicit or explicit usage agreement that people have with them. Perhaps the culture of G+ is such that this is unexpected, or perhaps it's just HN echo chamber bleating? I'm not a Google user, so I wouldn't presume to say.
Nice to see some common sense on the subject here. Totally agree. This is a nice feature. I like seeing my friends reviews of Android and Chrome app I download. I would like to have the same feature for ads. This is great.
I agree, it seems expected. Every time I +1 something it's with the goal of that turning up in someone's search results one day.
They only use your reviews in ads for strangers if you share it with everyone. Just share it with one circle, and only people in that circle will see it, if I understand this correctly.
Shouldn't that be a conversation you have with your friend directly? Also it's not a recommendation for your friend, it's a recommendation to the general public.
If I want to recommend something to my friends on Plus, don't I already have a "Friends" circle I can broadcast to?
It's not a recommendation to the general public: your existing +1s, reviews and comments were already shared with whatever circles you'd already opted to share them with; this option just has those recommendations appear next to adverts for /only/ those same people.
One good reason why it "shouldn't" do this? It's doing it and giving you a choice to either be a part of it or not. That is more than you can ask for from a free service. If you were able to be a part of a service, not pay a thing, feeding data to it and expecting it not to use it in anyway you wouldn't like- then you would also not see the constant innovation brought about by such companies; and this is justified as long as the user is not forced into it; the golden rule of software.
When we look back a few years from now to see where google went wrong, it'll begin and end with Google+. It is the worst product execution and strategy in recent times.
I've moved our Open Source Community to a Google+ Community, I've personally found it's the best way to communicate and share content, news and announcements which ended up being much more engaging, interactive, visible and functional than everything else I've tried.
It encourages a better community feeling than the 140 chars allows for on Twitter, the content posted ends up being a lot more interesting, richer and more positive than the constant dump o' hate I see in my Tweet stream. Personally I'd prefer more ex-bloggers start posting on G+ than micro blogging their opinions on Twitter
We've moved from a mailing list which was a black-hole for Content with very poor discoverability, and despite having many members was mostly read-only/ignored with just the same small group responding. We're now directing future support questions to StackOverflow. Many people were using GitHub issues to communicate, but this was primarily only seen by the Core team and effectively invisible to the wider community.
We see much more engaging and visible feedback on G+, people frequently comment on posts, +1 and re-share.
If a such a highly publicized Google product is only used by "several friends" years after launch, it should be killed--not spammed more into the faces of users that do not want it.
The "several friends" I contact through Google+ are actual friends that I actually contact routinely, unlike the vast majority of the 200 or so friends I have on Facebook. Maybe I'm just unpopular, but I don't have more than a dozen actual close friends that I communicate with routinely.
Maybe he's talking about the ads, not plus. If the recommendations are just for people in your "friends" circle this recommendation engine has minimal impact. And just because I circle some people in Plus doesn't mean I want to see their recommendations.
I have my Facebook settings fairly well customized so that I only see updates from my closer friends. My point was that "several friends" is not a meaninglessly small number for a social network.
It really is just a single monumental mistake, everything about Google+ except for the product itself, which was always high quality (but the wrong product to begin with).
My problem with Google+ is that it's designed to trick people into sharing stuff. It's made me paranoid that anything I watch on YouTube or a story I read via Google News may end up in some stream I dont even know exists.
I opted out by deleting my Google+ profile last night. I honestly never wanted a Google+ profile and me submitting a YouTube video for a private audience (demonstrating a new feature in a web site I developed for a side client) that got broadcast to all my friends on Google+ was the last straw.
I hope you're prepared for a zillion A/B tested strategies to trick you to resigning up with G+ through YouTube. Say what you want about Facebook (and I don't have a FB account for many reasons) but at least they aren't constantly in my face trying to trick me to sign up.
Protip for the many Google employees that browse HN for fun or just to flag positive stories about Apple off the front page: the first 100 times I said "no" were not a mistake, I really don't want to sign up for G+. Get that shit out of my face forever pls.
If it was only YouTube... I recently got the prompt on GMail after a login, it was a mini-tab inside GMail for quite some time, it's a recurring question or even requirement on any new Google service, but the closest I've come to converting my old-style Google account into one with a G+ profile is certainly when adding your account on Android. One touch-sensitive button to start the process directly next to the one for skipping it..
I doubt there's many Googlers who downvote positive Apple stories, I don't know where people get this assumption that Googlers hate Apple. I don't even downvote negative Google stories. The only time I ever downvote anything is when the person in question is being an obvious douchebag or abusive.
Didn't realize you could do that without destroying your profile elsewhere in their ecosystem. So something like GMail and YouTube still work, but you have go Google+ profile?
It's too vague. Some of it sounds cool, some of it does not. So I opted out.
I would have made a series of focused opt-in pages that popup in stages over months (less annoying, less confusing) and sell each recommendation function as a cool feature with real benefits, like increased SEO authority, traffic to your Google Plus page, etc.
That said this makes me not want to comment, thumbs-up, plus one anything.
> Definitely great to see the box unchecked as default.
I'm not so sure if it's a default setting. I guess it inherits some other settings that Google used to have earlier. I have always allowed Google to use info from me, as they pleased. So, when I visted the link, it was checked for me.
Mind was unchecked as well. A little confusing seeing the headline and then it looking like I had already opted-out somehow. Made me wonder if it was one of those double-negative check boxes for toolbar installations.
I don't have a Google Plus profile for my Google account so I can't get to the checkbox to opt out without first creating a creating a Google Plus profile. Talk about a catch 22. Though maybe they're only planning to use Google+ content for ads?
If you don't use G+ there is nothing this opt out would do. This is an opt-out for having your G+ profile picture and name show up next to search results for people who have you in their circles. If you +1 a page, then that page can be promoted in your friends search results with your name linked to the page. It's actually a fairly useful feature and I often see Android links promoted by people I have added to circles, which is useful.
It's really a fairly benign feature to begin with as you have to actually +1 a page before it shows up. At any rate, this checkbox appears to remove that so that others can't see your +1s in search results. I don't really understand why you would +1 something and not want people to see though, although I'm guessing it has something to do with an employee of companyA +1ing companyBs page by mistake and making it look like an endorsement.
"When you disable this setting, your friends will be less likely to benefit from your recommendations." - I'm surprised that even my computer could render these bytes with a straight face.
Why? It's absolutely true. If you disable the setting, your reviews for products will not show up in your friends' results. Presumably some people would be interested to know that one of their friends purchased such-and-such a thing and found it useful.
You sure? I'm now getting a banner at the top of all my google pages that directs me to a page that tells me that I need to opt out (of course, I get the same useless upgrade to google plus screen).
It's interesting that folks in the tech community had the same reaction that I did... TURN IT OFF. Seems that this would be one of those "Don't be Evil" moments for Google. It seems reasonable that people wouldn't want their rating or review used out of context on an ad. This is exactly what's wrong with Facebook "Like" buttons. Why repeat the same mistake?
Speaking of all this tripe, does anyone know how to export your YouTube favourites without creating a G+ account?
A couple of days ago, it starting requiring me to sign up to add a video to my list of favourites, and the API throws an error - probably for the same reason.
I forget what the old setting was, but there was a G+ setting about showing +1s in other contexts, which I recall unchecking when I was unchecking all the "email me about..." settings and other cruft in the G+ settings. Looks like they remember that (it was unchecked for me too).
I'm in the minority in that I love Google+.
It's everything good about social networking without any of those pesky people everyone seems to like so much.
Unfortunately this page will probably not even hit the most gullible folks who signed in their gmail and are using Google+ unknowingly. Hope there is a broader communication from Google to allow people to disable this. Can't imagine this was made an automatic opt in.
So the people who are unknowingly using G+... aren't really generating anything for Google to use, are they? They want to show your reviews alongside ads. Well, if you're making reviews on Google+, that's not really "unknowing". If you're sharing, +1'ing, following, or starring content on G+, you're not really unknowingly using G+.
So basically people who technically have a G+ account but never use it shouldn't be affected, because you have to use G+ to generate this content.
