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Comment by xnxn | Hacker News Reader

I'm alarmed that the comments here are so bitter. Am I the only one who's had a positive experience with G+ so far? (Is my perception rose-tinted because I really, really want Facebook to die?)

The new Hangout stuff is great, and the addition of screen sharing has now obviated my need to use Skype. Maybe when On Air opens up I'll be able to broadcast my programming sessions.

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I love Google+. I have an Android phone and an Android tablet. I live in Google's world and I love it. I'm very excited to use the new Hangouts, too! However, my girlfriend has an Apps account. So our online lives are now totally separate - I don't see anything she posts on Facebook and she doesn't see anything I post on G+.

And that's where a lot of the bitter comes from. Google's built an amazing product that many of us want to use, but they've screwed up a lot of "small", separate things - so that pretty much everyone has been hurt by a policy, be it the Real Name Fiasco, No Paid Users Fiasco, No Friends Allowed Without Invites Fiasco, etc. It seems like they went out of their way to piss off every single user in a different way.

I love the product Google+, but I can't stand how they're handling it.

I dunno, I think most of those are hot air from a relatively small number of outspoken people. Not letting me just get everyone I care about onboard in my initial flurry of enthusiasm was probably a blunder, though. Hopefully everyone will get onboard in the initial excitement of my other friends.

I used to be very excited when G+ launched, and try to get all my friends on board.

I want Facebook to die, and it seemed Google understood that they can't afford to anger their users with Facebook-like policies -- when they're so far behind as it is.

Then came the Real Name or We Delete Your Online Life stories. That truly angered me, and I no longer advocate Google+ to any of my friends.

In a discussion[0] in the early days of G+, I said:

My wife has always been an intermittent Facebook user, because she was never sure how private anything was, and the periodic UI changes confused her. She's perfectly intelligent and reasonably technically savvy, but not a huge tech nerd, and not willing to invest time into figuring out all the nuances of FB. So I was really surprised when, after trying Google+ for a few days, she said, "I think this is really going to make my family closer." I don't know if there's a better measure of success for a social networking service than that.

Since then, she's continued to intermittently use Facebook, but has become something of a G+ evangelist to her friends, which I've never seen her do before, at least not for a tech product.

[0]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2751696

Agreed. The bandwagoning at hacker news has always been bad, but it seems to have gotten much worse over the last year or two. Some of it may just be sampling error: the rise of Android has made Google the "bad guy" to a lot of the Apple nuts here (and likewise some of Apple's recent actions have turned off the free software and civil liberties people), so we're noticing it because it's splitting the community.

Just chiming in to say that I've had a thoroughly positive experience my own self. I always felt Hangouts was a more meaningful difference than Circles (though the broadcast model worked wonders: I circle interesting people and I'm not required to circle people back). The ability to open up your video to a couple of friends (or a hundred, as some of my friends do) is rather nice for saying hi randomly.

I'm looking forward to using G+ Hangouts on my phone.

Overall, (and, forgive me, since I'm going relatively OT here) I've noticed a lot of hostility towards Google in every Google post. I've not been with HN for too long, so I don't know if this is what partially defines HN, but I'm starting to get irked by it.

I really saw the hostility start to show when Google required "real names" with G+. Before that I don't recall as much hostility; at least not more than any other large company would receive.

I think that there is a perception that Google is turning to the "dark side", whether true or not. Recent examples include: Android isn't open enough, Google wallet is going to be used to track you, G+ puts you at risk of losing your Gmail account, and so on. I happen to agree some of the points that get raised regarding Google. Whether or not they're "bad guys", is something I'll leave for others to decide.

To me it seems like HN comments have been getting more hostile in general. More often than not the topmost comments on a link now are pretty negative (in my subjective opinion).

There is a dark side to overly positive thinking. I'd settle for mostly positive with reservations and open discussion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo

I think a lot of it has to do with the HN love for Apple. HN used to love Google until they became Apple's enemy #1.

What I find more disturbing is the influx of Microsoft friendly commenters. Articles on various MS products are frequent and receive a lot of praise.

Articles that point out how MS is crippling innovation through extortion of Linux users receive relatively little attention.

Google is an extremely open company (with respect to user data and user rights as well as contributions to open source software). However, most comments about Google products and contributions seem to take the most negative view possible. Case in point, today's article on Richard Stallman's comments on Android focused on how he was critical of Android, mostly ignoring that he said "Android is a major step towards an ethical, user-controlled, free-software portable phone..." Android is still the most open major platform out there. It's put Linux on millions of devices.

> Android is still the most open major platform out there. It's put Linux on millions of devices.

If you want to do crazy stuff on your iPhone you jailbreak it. If you want to do crazy stuff on your average Android you root it. How does using Linux alone make something 'more open'?

I also think that most metrics for being "open" are missing the big point about the cloud. Yeah, maybe Google's business code is written in FOSS tech and they give people a FOSS browser and one or two FOSS mobile OS to use their services. Where's the practical open-ness for the end user? It's still a cloud ecosystem, the one thing that is worse than a closed-source desktop ecosystem.</rant>

I think the "Apple love" comes from timing. Y combinator and HN itself really came into their own around the same time as when the iPhone was born. So you have a boat load of hungry entrepreneurs and a brand new hyper popular tech that gives them a very clean shot at a startup with a simple business plan: "We'll do X for the iPhone". No matter how mundane or boring X may be it was a wonderful business plan to sell. Then on comes Google and makes everything complicated again - no more one OS, one plan, tiny team etc. Android makes everything harder for these entrepreneurs many of whom had limited Mac oriented skill sets. And at the same time as it does that, it seems less lucrative into the bargain. Google killed the iPhone entrepreneur's dream. I think some amount of bitterness comes from this.

I agree with many of these replies, but I also think that Google was held to a higher standard because of their populist "Don't be evil" mantra, and every time they act like a big publicly owned corporation (which they are), it comes off as personally offensive and disingenuous.'

Apple gets away with it because they've always kind of admitted they were assholes/auteurs.

> Is my perception rose-tinted because I really, really want Facebook to die?

Yes.

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