Comment by jackarleth | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jackarleth | Hacker News Reader

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You seem to have a strong opinion on Google+, yet you don't understand the 'grand' concept of Google+.

What Google is trying to do with Google+ is take hold of the information market that resides within social media and use this information in combination with adwords. Google wants to integrate Google+ into all of it's products, starting with Youtube and give all the Google products a uniform experience. I'm flabbergasted that you have a problem with this since this is the main goal for Apple. (I assume that you have Apple products, since you talk in such lengths and positive manner of Siri) Google+ is also not about a social graph, it's about doing social media the right, natural way.

You also don't understand how Adwords works when you talk about Siri. A 'click' is a hit to the page, be it a click, enter, wget, or voice search of Siri. So searches in Google with Siri will earn Google money. Also iOS uses Google Maps as it's map application so Siri uses Google Maps, you just don't see it.

A last inaccuracy: “Don’t try to do something in everything. Rather focus on doing everything in something.” This would be exactly why Google has been stopping so many of it's products.

Next to these points there is a whole lot of stuff that you are simply wrong about.

Edit: changed positivism to a correct use of words

"""What Google is trying to do with Google+ is take hold of the information market that resides within social media and use this information in combination with adwords. Google wants to integrate Google+ into all of it's products, starting with Youtube and give all the Google products a uniform experience."""

Which part of the article gives you the impression that the author doesn't understand that? He specifically calls this integration, and his problem is that it is done badly.

"""I'm flabbergasted that you have a problem with this since this is the main goal for Apple."""

Wait what? Apple goal is to "take hold of the information market that resides within social media and use this information in combination with adwords."????

Even if you replace adwords with something else, like iAds, this doesn't make sense.

"""(I assume that you have Apple products, since you talk in such lengths and positivism of Siri) Google+ is also not about a social graph, it's about doing social media the right, natural way."""

In what way is Google+ more "natural" than Facebook?

Also, "positivism": you keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

"""You also don't understand how Adwords works when you talk about Siri. A 'click' is a hit to the page, be it a click, enter, wget, or voice search of Siri. So searches in Google with Siri will earn Google money."""

No, they wont. This doesn't even make sense. For one, Siri could bypass Google altogether --the user is using primarily Siri, not Google, so the results could come from anywhere.

Second, even if Google is queried, Siri hides the Google results page and just returns the appropriate result as a spoken list. Do you really believe people would pay if their ads are now shown to the end user?

"""Also iOS uses Google Maps as it's map application so Siri uses Google Maps, you just don't see it."""

I'd guess the author is well aware of this. Are you aware that Apple has bough a mapping company and is looking to integrate its own maps in a future iOS release?

> Wait what? Apple goal is to "take hold of the information market that resides within social media and use this information in combination with adwords."????

He was talking about this "give all the Google products a uniform experience". Apple gives all their products a uniform experience as well.

Google+ is more "natural" because of the circles. Thats why the ads say "Sharing, but like real life"...

I tried writing my remarks as short as possible, it seems that it caused some problems. I'll try to correct them in a lengthier way =P

"Which part of the article gives you the impression that the author doesn't understand that?" The writer does not see any advantages of the integration of the Google search engine in Google+. I'm sadly forced to understand that he fails to get the idea behind it. Searching in shared posts in Google+ is one of the key features that Google+ has over Facebook and other social networks since it will let you simply search for "that interesting site my friend shared with me last month" instead of going through his posts manually.

My second point was cleared up by true_religion, thanks for that.

Google+ is more natural because of it's Circle system. You don't broadcast all your interesting findings to everyone you know, you tell it to the select group of people who might be interested, just like in real-life. Next to that, as said before, you can search the posts and shares in Google+. You can also see your profile in the point of view of others on the web, in your circles. This makes setting up your profile a lot more natural and easy.

I have to admit that "positivism" is indeed the wrong word. I stand corrected and I'll change it.

"No, they wont. This doesn't even make sense. For one, Siri could bypass Google altogether" Then where will Siri get the results? Siri can't pull them out of thin air, they have to come out of a search engine and if Apple values the "magical" experience of it's users then they should use Google. The user is using Siri as a GUI that takes the Google results and speaks them out. But the results need to come from somewhere.

"I'd guess the author is well aware of this. Are you aware that Apple has bough a mapping company and is looking to integrate its own maps in a future iOS release?" I'm aware of the "3D"gimmick (it's nice to have 3D, but I would prefer to look where I'm driving/walking/cycling) that they bought and the mapping company they bought. But I think that is a bad move, since Apple would then be inventing the wheel again, only to disconnect themselves from Google maps. If Apple is willing to pump so much money into collecting data of roads and buildings all over the world, then they would have set up their own carrier. Since the cost of starting your own carrier is peanuts compared to photographing the entire world.

I hope this made things a bit more clear.

"""I hope this made things a bit more clear."""

Yeah, much clearer. Here are my remarks:

"""Searching in shared posts in Google+ is one of the key features that Google+ has over Facebook and other social networks since it will let you simply search for "that interesting site my friend shared with me last month" instead of going through his posts manually."""

Maybe, but that would be trivial for Facebook to add. It's not like full-text search is rocket technology. And in this domain, PageRank is not even needed.

"""Google+ is more natural because of it's Circle system. You don't broadcast all your interesting findings to everyone you know, you tell it to the select group of people who might be interested, just like in real-life. """

Yeah, that's nice. But does it bother people using Facebook? I don't see it. Also Facebook added some similar features lately.

"""Then where will Siri get the results? Siri can't pull them out of thin air, they have to come out of a search engine and if Apple values the "magical" experience of it's users then they should use Google."""

Not necessarily. There are better sources than Google for a lot of stuff Siri caters for. For example, Siri already uses Wolfram Alpha for math, stock, general information related searches. Apple could provide its own dictionary searches, wikipedia searches, it's own map data for location searches, use the iTunes DB for music and lyrics searches, IMDB for movie times and movie/actor info, Amazon et al for shopping, travelocity of something for airplane tickets, etc covering a lot of ground query-wise. And they could also switch to Bing in a heartbeat. You get the idea.

"""But I think that is a bad move, since Apple would then be inventing the wheel again, only to disconnect themselves from Google maps."""

No, they won't invent the wheel, they bought a company that has already invented and made one. And it only makes sense to disconnected from Google Maps, a service by a competitor mobile OS vendor, that could even cut them off of it altogether when he wishes.

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