Rubénerd!

Remember in November 2011 when I voted for a non-JavaScript Google +1 button? Let's see how we're doing with getting an answer.

Comment 34 by rlueb...@gmail.com, Aug 27 (2 days ago): This was reported September 2011 and is NOT fixed yet. Still no +1 without Javascript, only sharing. And still not a single remark from Google ... Please add this feature. Due to laws in Germany +1 is unusable this way.

I had my Google+ account suspended for using my real name in March 2012, and I don't search with Google while logged in anyway. Still, would be nice to let Googlers vote for my stuff without JavaScript.

To quote my dear friend Sebastian, you're not firing me Google, I quit!

The backstory

So I was sent a link to Google+ this afternoon, which necessitated me blowing the cobwebs off my Google credentials and logging in for the first time in months.

Turns out Google suspended my Google+ account, on the following basis:

Your profile has been suspended.

After reviewing your profile, we have determined that the name provided violates the Google+ Names Policy.

While suspended, you will not be able to make full use of Google services that require an active profile, such as Google+, Reader and Picasa. This will not prevent you from using other Google services, like Gmail.

If you have changed your name in accordance with our policies, please submit an appeal and we will review your profile again.

If you believe that your profile has been suspended in error, please submit your profile for reconsideration.

Your profile will be reviewed again and re-enabled if it complies with the Google+ Names Policy. Reviews are usually completed within a few days.

We're sorry for the inconvenience.

We understand that Google+ and its Names Policy may not be for everyone at this time. We'd be sad to see you go, but if you do choose to leave, make a copy of your Google+ data first. Then, click here to disable Google+.

Come again?

I had my name set as Ruben Schade, esq. While a little tongue in cheek, the name itself could be verified from any number of links I had to my own domains and profiles on other websites. The "esq" portion is a honourific which can be legally used by any individual in Australia and Singapore. For all intents and purposes, this is my name.

In any event, I have neither the time nor inclination to fight with Google bureaucracy. I've deleted my Google+ profile, and the Rubenerd.com page. If this is how they're going to treat their users, I don't want anything to do with their (albeit failing) site.

So, I deleted it!

From the deletion page:

You've successfully deleted Google+ and associated social content

We're sorry to see you leave! Please help us improve by telling us why you are leaving and what we can do better. This survey is optional but your feedback is much appreciated.

Under "Please tell us why you're leaving", I left this:

The lack of time and inclination to fight Google bureaucracy, your heavy-handed and knee-jerk suspension of accounts with legitimate names including mine, ever increasing concerns over the privacy of my data with Google, my replacement of this and other Google services with better alternatives, lack of use of Google+, and finally in preparation to delete my Google profile entirely.

With my move away from Gmail, Google Code, Google Reader and their other services, this means I'll no longer be logging into Google at all anymore. Once I'm sure everyone knows my new hosted email address, I'll be deleting my Google account that I started in 2003.

As for Google+, I suppose my deletion won't count for much given I barely used it anyway. To answer myself from July 2011, not me.

Regardless of where you stand on the Google+ integration into Google search results, this site is an eye opener for what it returns, and who's behind it.

Complete with an Orwellian name!

From the page:

How much better would social search be if Google surfaced results from all across the web? The results speak for themselves. We created a tool that uses Google’s own relevance measure—the ranking of their organic search results—to determine what social content should appear in the areas where Google+ results are currently hardcoded.

Now in Google's defence, they claimed on Google+ that they couldn't perform the same (or similar) thing themselves because Twitter (and presumably Facebook, etc) had closed access to their silos. Right?

All of the information in this demo comes from Google itself, and all of the ranking decisions are made by Google's own algorithms. No other services or APIs are accessed.

Ouch

Now I don't see Google+ as being a credible threat. I also still don't trust Facebook, and feel like they're playing politics here by capitalising on the stumbling of an opponent. As a service Google singled out to make an example of, you can bet the folks at Twitter also relished the opportunity to design the service.

Despite all these caveats, the results speak for themselves. Google could implement this, no question.

What's most breathtaking about this is Google did something that Facebook, Twitter and the like couldn't do: unite them. Seemingly Google didn't get the divide and conquer memo.

Not to pound a dead horse here, but I keep coming back to my theory that marketers and managers now run Google, not its otherwise talented engineers. This is clearly not a technical issue, it's a matter of PR and priorities.

So Google is integrating Google+ into Google. I suppose I should be worried about this, but I'm not!

I'm surprised that others are

When the news first broke, and the subsequent juvenile shouting match ensued, I'll admit I was more surprised that some people were surprised, rather than being surprised about the news itself. That sentence, plus my introduction claiming Google is integrating Google+ into Google borders on Inception.

To even any casual observer, it should have been obvious that Google would inform their search results with Google+ at some point. Sarcasm aside, why else would an internet advertising company launch such a service? Ditto the +1 button.

The problem for Google is more and more information is being found through people rather than algorithms, and traditionally their strength has overwhelmingly been in the latter. Facebook is arguably leading this charge (go figure), and Twitter is not too far behind. In Japan, they're ahead.

Google figures they can merge Google+ and searches together, and deliver personalised search results. They've been tailoring results to people who don't opt out of their non-DNT respecting tracking for some time now, but this just takes it to the next level.

Of course, this introduces some serious anti-trust questions, which Eric Schmidt has either dismissed or pointed to Twitter's rel="nofollow" stance; the former of which is a little disturbing and the latter is misdirection, as far as I'm concerned. Danny Sullivan and MG Siegler would seem to agree. Apparently the blinkers are firmly installed on enough people though, read Google's response on Google+ for the comments... if you dare!

Don't worry, be happy!

Bascically, there are three reasons why I'm not [so] concerned.

People are already spelling the end of other social networks because Google+ has unfair placement, like most Google products as Ben Endelman painstakingly points out. I'm a little optimistic that they'll see the error in their ways, realise what a PR mess they've created and reverse course. They've done this many times, Google Buzz's privacy fiacso probably being the most well known example.

Secondly, as to the anti-trust whatnot specifically, I'm also not too concerned. If Internet Explorer couldn't compel an overwhelming share of the English speaking world to Bing, Soapbox and the like, I doubt people will start leaving their Facebook accounts in droves just because they see some extra stuff in their Google sidebar.

Finally, it's often said the main thing protecting us from government abuses isn't oversight, but incompetence on their part. I don't think Google is incompetent, but for now the utter irrelevance of Google+ for anyone other than the Robert Scobles of the net will keep this problem at bay.

The open feature request is listed as an enhancement which is a bit of a misnomer, but feel free to add your voice and vote on the Google Plus Platform list if you agree.

Throwing my support behind a non-JS solution for accessibility and speed.

A simple, elegant GET request based system would be wonderful, I already use it for Twitter and Delicious, should be trivial for Google engineers to implement.

Of course, it's intuitively obvious why an advertising company doesn't want a JavaScript alternative, but we can still dream. I'd implement it in a heartbeat here if they did.

Provided they have, I see six potential reasons why, some of which would be the result of doing no evil!

No more extensions

Firstly, have they really discontinued the toolbar? From their download page:

Google Toolbar for Firefox is compatible with Firefox version 4 or older. To find out what version of Firefox you're using, click the Help menu and select "About Firefox" (on the Mac, the option is located in the "Firefox" menu).

If you use Firefox version 5 or newer, you won't be able to use Google Toolbar.

While technically this isn't an admission that the software is discontinued, relegated to the alarmingly large pile of dead Google projects (or Lab if you will), it may as well be.

I hardly used thee

Apparently the Google Toolbar had many great features, including links to Google Reader, an unread email count for Gmail, an easy way to share discovered sites, a Google search box.

Despite this, I never got around to installing it. Not because I was afraid, but because I felt no need to have it. I already had third party extensions for many of the features the toolbar provided, bookmarklets for the rest, and the all important search box was already in the top right hand corner.

That said though, there seem to be enough people who did use its features who are willing to run insecure, older versions of Firefox just to keep it. Those are some dedicated (if foolish) people!

But... why?

As with the closure of Google Labs, the end of this toolbar leaves us with lots of questions; or at least it leaves a lot of questions with me. Which is to say, I'm thinking of lots of questions, if I asked these out loud right now there'd be nobody here to answer, and I talk enough to myself as it is.

The first possibility is financial, though I have a hard time buying (see what I did there?) a company with Google's resources couldn't keep a person or two on the payroll to keep their toolbar efforts current.

The second is the inevitable streamlining middle managers and shareholders start to demand of companies that have reached a certain size and can no longer justify frivolous things like R&D and customer service. Google is certainly not the nimble, informal creature it once was, perhaps this is just a sign of its "maturity"... though I hope not its peaking.

The third potentially paints Mozilla as the evil folk. Part of the allure for Google having people running their toolbars in Firefox must have been that searches didn't incur a referral fee to Mozilla. Perhaps with increased competition, Mozilla needed the cash and twisted Google's arm. There's no evidence of this, and it seems silly Mozilla would go out of their way to screw their primary source of revenue, but the speculation is irresistible.

The fourth is a technological one. The Mozilla team have promised greater sandboxing of extensions, perhaps by doing so Google can't track browsing behaviour anymore, therefore killing the real reason for the toolbar's existence.

The fifth reason is feature duplication, and the fact Firefox mainline now has many of the toolbar's features. This was the only reason entertained by the Google folks officially, though I can't help but think it's not the only one.

Which brings us to number 6

While all these are possibilities (remote or otherwise!), I reckon this has more to do with Google wanting more holdouts on Chrome. The Google Toolbar collecting information about browsing habits in Internet Explorer and Firefox is valuable, but not as valuable as people surrounded by Googlyness in Chrome.

In the words of Dave Winer, this was purely a business decision. Perhaps the Google team figured the carrot of faster rendering and program execution had failed to entice everyone, so the stick of a reduced Google experience may persuade the rest. If Google+ takes off, one can imagine deep integration with Chrome that could also be partly achieved with a toolbar, but without one available it'll give people more of an excuse to switch. Anti-trust?

I trust Google more now than I did Microsoft in the 1990s, but I'm not as sure that I'm wrong about this as I wish I was.

I disagree with Robert Scoble's assessment that Twitter needs to be more like Google+. If anything, from using Google+ I've learned to appreciate Twitter's simplicity! Oh yeah, and pudding.

It's not easy being green

In an entry on Google+ (makes sense) and on his blog, Robert goes into detail how Twitter now seems boring, and that the only way to change this would be for Twitter to broadly emulate Google+. MG Seigler posted a rebuttal, which I'd be able to take more seriously if it weren't quite as scathing, and hosted on a site that requires people to use a Facebook account to leave comments. Still, I found myself nodding my head in several places.

On the one hand, I can see Robert's point. With a [paltry!] 1200+ followers myself, I'm acutely aware of how frustrating it can be to receive comments from people on a regular basis without knowing which tweet they're commenting on! With tens of thousands of followers and commentators, there's no denying Google+ facilitates tracking theses threaded conversations more easily for people like him.

Claiming this can be fixed by making Twitter more like Google+ though makes absolutely no sense to me, just as John C. Dvorak's claim that Apple would only gain market value and share by licensing Mac OS X didn't. You're awesome John, but what were you smoking my friend?

Google+ is cool, but so is Twitter

Since Twitter's inception people have complained it's missing feature XYZ, but fortunately Twitter's managers have [largely] ignored such demands unless their users overwhelmingly form a consensus, such as with @replies and retweeting. The appeal of the platform is simple: 140 characters to do what you see fit. If you want more features, clients like Twitter's TweetDeck (that still sounds weird to say that) provide them.

The proof is in the pudding. Mmm, rice pudding. Services such as FriendFeed and Google Buzz have attempted to come along in this [relatively] free marketplace to introduce lacking features such as threaded comments, but they never really gained any significant mind share. It makes sense for Google+ because that's what the service started as, and because they're a clone of Facebook... who ironically bought FriendFeed and attempted to clone much of Twitter's features.

Now I have no qualm in hypocritically acknowledging that Twitter does need a few more features. The ability to automatically block obvious spammers (those who only send links to strangers and have no followers) and perhaps "associating" a URL with a tweet as I suggested in January would be fantastic, but the key is these features would arguably make the system simpler.

I love you Robert Scoble and am a huge fan, but I really believe copying Google+'s features would miss the point of Twitter entirely, and I sincerely hope nobody there takes your advice. The Google+ team should be taking it as a compliment though, they're obviously doing something right!

As a matter of disclosure, I know its not cool to admit but I've been a Twitter user since Q1 2007, and I have Google+ and like what I see.

With the launch of their Google+ social network, Google have now allowed webmasters to have the +1 buttons on their pages. Should I use them?

From http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/:

Add +1 to your pages to help your site stand out. +1 buttons let people who love your content recommend it on Google search

Thinking out loud

Aside from having pages ranked with these buttons appearing on their new Google+ profiles, it's clear Google plans to use these to influence their search results. The potential ethical dilemma this introduces is for another post.

I've eschewed (gesundheit) having external, dynamically loaded JavaScript here since this site's inception because of privacy and speed concerns, but this is the first time I've had an inkling of questioning my decision.

Given these +1 buttons are appearing in all their search results, would it make much practical difference allowing you to click here too? Either way, it's an optional process you're entering into, I'd just be making it a bit easier to share on sites such as Google+.

I'm not sure. What do you think?

Would be no problem if they did this

This wouldn't the first time I've let people share my posts with another service; until the latest site redesign I had a beautifully simple, static Bookmark on del.icio.us link that worked like this:

<a href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=[PERMALINK]&title=[TITLE]">Bookmark This on Del.icio.us</a>

Then there were the ways you could allow people to subscribe to your blog in various blog platforms, such as Google Reader:

<a href="http://www.google.com/ig/add?feedurl=http://rubenerd.com/feed/">Google Reader</a>

Many of my concerns would be alleviated if Google had a similar, GET request mechanism for +1 instead of relying on JavaScript. This would be cool:

<a href="http://plus.google.com/share?url=[PERMALINK]&title=[TITLE]">+1</a>

I suppose they're doing some verification in that JavaScript to prevent click fraud, and to tie a vote to a particular Google account; but then again the del.icio.us link essentially achieved the same thing while being static, provided you were logged into your del.icio.us account.

Oh well, I suppose I'd need JavaScript after all if I wanted to implement this.

In the words of one of my friends on the service, I finally "caved" and registered for Google+. If you're on it, feel free to add me, do a search for Ruben Schade, esq ^_^.

The [potentially] good stuff!

Having used it for a day now, its pretty clear Google has made no secret of its intentions for Google+. I've read people making broad, sweeping claims that the service serves a niche between Twitter and Facebook, but it's clearly targeted at the latter. And that's a Good Thing™.

The layout is the same as Facebook, the threaded conversations Facebook presumably brought in from their acquisition of FriendFeed are the same, the tabs and even the optional photos along the top are the same. Instead of Facebook's trademark light blue and grey, Google+ is grey and... grey. It's streamlined and minimalistic, in much the same way Facebook was when people were leaving the awful mess of MySpace. Remember MySpace?! CANNOT UNSEE.

Along with the familiar interface to entice Facebookers away, the Google team have also gone out of their way to counter Facebooks insidious, intentionally obfuscated privacy settings that have continued to make headlines. People who think these Circles will always ensure their information is safe from leaking to the wrong people are deluded of course, but the interface for adding people to various circles and the explanations of everything in Plain English are a refreshing change.

More importantly, even if Google+ fails (all but the most dyed in the wool fans readily admit history isn't on Google's side), I hope this demonstration of how privacy settings should be presented provide the impetus for others to implement similar systems, to take privacy more seriously, and that users themselves will stop being so apathetic and start demanding it. A long shot I realise, but who knows?

As I said, I've been using it for a day now and love what they've done with the UI. As a Google Reader user, my Buzz stream is presented as a separate tab, though I wonder how long that'll be the case before its folded into our Google+ profile directly. It certainly seems redundant having two "life streams", but then again Google seems unusually tolerant of such service duplication. Will Google Reader continue to exist in its current form, or will Sharing on the service be replaced with +1?

I'm really exited to see how this all pans out!

The [potentially] bad stuff

If you’ve done nothing wrong, You’ve got nothing to fear;
If you’ve something to hide, You shouldn’t even be here;
You’ve had your chance, Now we’ve got the mandate;
If you’ve changed your mind, I’m afraid it’s too late;
We’re concerned, You’re a threat;
You’re not integral, To the project.
~ Eric Schmidt
~ Pet Shop Boys, Integral

The bad news is, Google+ is run by Google, a company who's overwhelmingly primary source of revenue is selling our habits to behavioural advertisers, not paying tax on it, and that is regularly compelled to disclose information to American intelligence agencies.

While I acknowledge they're vastly more ethical and transparent than Facebook, we still must maintain vigilance and follow common sense rules about cloud computing. Don't use the service for anything private. Withhold certain personal details, and mix in a little BS! Use a profile picture of yourself from your snowy trip to the Czech Republic where your face is obscured enough to render facial recognition algorithms useless!

As I say now, don't be used as a cloud tool, use it as a tool!

ECMA-GoogleScript

The reason why I abstained from Google+ initially is that Google's launching and failing of social network after social network has become a running joke, and that I was less than enthusiastic about starting over for a fifth time. Many of the arguments being used to justify its existence and why it's "different from all their previous services" are what people said... about their previous services. Make no mistake, so far the script has been exactly the same.

Facebook needs some serious comeuppance, and Google is one of the few companies with enough clout, name recognition and cool to take them on. Provided they commit to transparency, Google does have the potential to take the high road against Facebook and be a force for good again.

Google recently released Google+, a new social network. Do you think you need another social network? ~ The Daily Post

You mean, another Google social network, or another social network in general? I've had revolutionary Orkut, Knol, Jaiku, Wave and Buzz accounts that went nowhere, so it's hard to muster enthusiasm for yet another of this company's efforts. If it gains some traction I'll look into it further.

One thing's for sure, Facebook sorely needs some competition. I'm uneasy about trusting Google with my personal information (not necessarily their fault), but I trust them far more than Facebook. Then again, I'd trust Diaspora more.

As for the name, it's almost as lame as Apple's Ping, but not as bad as Qrocity!