How Steve Jobs Changed Google Plus 243
Anthony_Cargile writes "Everyone thinks of Google Plus as a social networking website competing with Facebook, but that is no longer the case — even Google recognizes its failure in that regard. But in a meeting with Sergey Brin and Larry Page shortly before his death, Steve Jobs gave key advice as to what direction to take their company with regards to Google Plus, as is evidenced by their controversial new 'umbrella' privacy policy that went in effect this year. Privacy advocates beware, as the problem is almost certainly worse than ever anticipated."
Let the guy fucking rest already... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parallel world. (Score:5, Insightful)
Privacy advocates beware, as the problem is almost certainly worse than ever anticipated.
Good thing we have alternatives, right?
This is what Slashdot has become? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing but gossip, and scaremongering.
FFS. Steve Jobs is not god, you dimwits. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Parallel world. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, as in none. I don't use any of them.
"Privacy advocates beware" (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you mean Privacy Nuts.
If you think that information wasn't already communicated between groups in the company, you are hugely mistaken,
The new privacy policy just made this far more clear.
All the separate agreements equally allowed this.
If there is anything worse than people still bringing up how OH SO WONDERFUL STEVE JOBS is, it is the privacy nut articles.
Give me another Raspberry Pi Beowulf Cluster of viral infections or whatever the hell else.
Oh GOD, I just realized this is both! That's it, time for sleep. I'm done. Gone, out of here.
Re:This is what Slashdot has become? (Score:5, Insightful)
"But where does Steve Jobs fit into all this? Before he passed, the famed Apple CEO (and former LSD user) met with Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, with Page as Google CEO by that time."
I'm not sure exactly what reaction that little interjection was supposed to elicit from the reader...
Strange advice from Jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple's online services have never integrated terribly well, and they have a bad habit of renaming things and moving features from one service to another.
Which seems to mimic a certain Redmond based software company's online ventures...
This article says nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let the guy fucking rest already... (Score:3, Insightful)
Five bucks says the person who marked this as interesting isn't.
Re:a certain lack of users (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA explains it - if you're using YouTube, Google search, gmail, or any other google service, you're using Google+. It's just a big wrapper for the whole experience. No one cares if you aren't posting about drunken weekend escapades because your digital footprints are just as valuable without the meaningless banter that serves as an excuse to use the FaceTubes.
Re:Let the guy fucking rest already... (Score:5, Insightful)
he invites this treatment with his historical treatment of others, and his arrogant narcissism.
Trying to understand (Score:2, Insightful)
So I read the linked blog post, and I'm trying to figure out what the guy's real point is. The one thing that IS clear is the author's an unabashed Google fanboy and can't grasp the concept that his favorite company might be able to fail at something.
Anyway, I'm stuck deciding between two possibilities:
a) He knows in his heart of hearts that Google+ is a failure, and is trying to pin that on a non-Google person because - hey, you can't libel the dead.
b) He really does believe Google can do no wrong, and is trying to somehow convince non-believers by invoking the perceived infallibility of Jobs.
In any case, it's hard to believe anyone could believe that Brin and Page heard Jobs say "you need to unify your products into a seamless whole" and twisted that into "your problem is you don't have a unified privacy policy".
Re:Let the guy fucking rest already... (Score:3, Insightful)
Even dead, Steve is far more interesting than all of /. commentators put together, more interesting than almost every CEO in the entire tech industry.
Steve & Steve (Jobs/Woz) formed the very computer industry you are enjoying now. No, it was NOT IBM. Their PC came out AFTER the Apple I/II as a response.
Steve was tremendously influential in the Music, Movie, Smartphone, Computer, Retail sections.
Apple haters tend to loath him and Apple. But you totally underestimate what a world without Apple would look like today. It would be frightening.
The PC wouldn't exist (probably) as the PC-standard was only invented as a quick&dirty effort as response to the Apple 2.
The GUI wouldn't be there where it is now. (and not Xerox wouldn't have sold it. They had only a raw prototype and their own managers said it wouldn't be marketable)
Smartphones would still be in the iron grasp of carriers, filled with bloatware and branded to death. The iPhone was the first one were the carriers had ZERO influence.
Tablets would probably still be synonymous with failed Tablet-PCs featuring WinXP.
etc, etc.
No, Steve was not holy, innocent or a general good guy.
Nevertheless, should he be recognised as one of the greatest figures in IT history.
Yes he was that important.
And no, it is not natural that someone else would have come along and did the same as Steve.
Otherwise there would already be the next Rockstar CEO somewhere. But there isn't.
Think about it next time you bash Apple.
Re:Let the guy fucking rest already... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:This article says nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Parallel world. (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if the same isn't true for online privacy, if by caring about it and making some attempt to remain private, I've put myself on the radar for anyone who happens to be monitoring online activity.
Re:FFS. Steve Jobs is not god, you dimwits. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:FFS. Steve Jobs is not god, you dimwits. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the same man who came up with "MobileMe" and Ping. Remember those massive failures? No? That's because the media ignores them in portraying Apple as a company that never makes a mistake.
Where do you get off calling MobileMe a massive failure? There's a bunch of different services that existed before MobileMe, and exist under iCloud now. Some services have changed quite a bit, like Gallery to Photo Stream, iDisk is going away, and new services like Match are available for a price, while the synchronization stuff is now free.
Who says Apple doesn't make mistakes and what makes you think the media doesn't give them coverage??
You don't even know what MobileMe is, and I'm starting to think you don't know the difference between a mistake and a failure.
+5 Said something bad about Apple, LOL.
Re:a certain lack of users (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let the guy fucking rest already... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even dead, Steve is far more interesting than all of /. commentators put together, more interesting than almost every CEO in the entire tech industry.
[snip]
Think about it next time you bash Apple.
That's what they said about Aristotle every time someone challenged some aspect of the great man's system. Maybe that's why it took 1800 years for the heliocentric model of the solar system, and the experimental basis of science, to gain any traction.
Just because someone has impressive stature doesn't mean that everything s/he did has to be worshipped and parrotted.
Re:Let the guy fucking rest already... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even dead, Steve is far more interesting than all of /. commentators put together, more interesting than almost every CEO in the entire tech industry.
CEOs are not so important as they (and you) think.
Steve & Steve (Jobs/Woz) formed the very computer industry you are enjoying now. No, it was NOT IBM. Their PC came out AFTER the Apple I/II as a response.
There were also Kenbak, Micral, Altair, Atari, Commodore, Sharp, Tandy/Radio Shack, etc... producing computers at that time.
Steve was tremendously influential in the Music, Movie, Smartphone, Computer, Retail sections. Apple haters tend to loath him and Apple. But you totally underestimate what a world without Apple would look like today. It would be frightening. The PC wouldn't exist (probably) as the PC-standard was only invented as a quick&dirty effort as response to the Apple 2.
I'm not an Apple hater, but you're exagerating. Saying that the IBM-PC was an answer to the Apple ][, is as saying that the Apple ][ was an answer to IBM's 5100 [wikipedia.org]. The IBM-PC was an answer to all 70s microcomputers.
The GUI wouldn't be there where it is now. (and not Xerox wouldn't have sold it. They had only a raw prototype and their own managers said it wouldn't be marketable)
Perhaps VisiOn [wikipedia.org] or one of the other projects at the time would have happened.
Smartphones would still be in the iron grasp of carriers, filled with bloatware and branded to death. The iPhone was the first one were the carriers had ZERO influence.
That is very US-centric. Here in this part of Europe, the carriers never had any influence on smartphones at all.
Tablets would probably still be synonymous with failed Tablet-PCs featuring WinXP.
So you admit that tablets were happening before jobs. WinXP tablets were more popular than Apple's Newton. iPad was more popular than WinXP tablets.
etc, etc. No, Steve was not holy, innocent or a general good guy. Nevertheless, should he be recognised as one of the greatest figures in IT history. Yes he was that important. And no, it is not natural that someone else would have come along and did the same as Steve. Otherwise there would already be the next Rockstar CEO somewhere. But there isn't. Think about it next time you bash Apple.
Jobs was important to IT history. But he was not as important as you make him. And don't worry, new rockstars pop up all the time - they will as long as there are fans.
Re:FFS. Steve Jobs is not god, you dimwits. (Score:5, Insightful)
"You're holding it wrong." "Just avoid holding it that way." "Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong."
Re:FFS. Steve Jobs is not god, you dimwits. (Score:0, Insightful)
Those quotes are in response to the disastrous INITIAL RELEASE of MobileMe, you disingenuous cunt.
Re:Parallel world. (Score:5, Insightful)
Privacy advocates beware, as the problem is almost certainly worse than ever anticipated.
Good thing we have alternatives, right?
Well, yes and no.
There are alternatives, but no useful alternatives. The problem of the Internet is that it is very conductive to the creation of monopolies, especially when it comes to sites that rely on user input. Facebook is big because in the early days it managed to gain critical mass. This made it grow to the juggernaut it is now. Slashdot is also a site that gained critical mass, and as a result is one of the biggest IT/tech related discussion sites.
As a result, if you want to connect with friends and use an online social network, you go to Facebook, because everyone else is there already. You don't go to Google+ or any other such network, as your friends aren't there. The sheer size of Facebook is its main attraction, and this makes it also very difficult for other networks to start to compete. After all you first have to get critical mass, and that's really difficult.
Even a company like Google, with its very positive image, its huge resources, gaining enormous publicity with their start-up network (they made it to the TV news, front page of news papers worldwide, all over the tech sites) didn't manage to do this. They didn't even gain enough traction to survive as social network in a niche, like e.g. LinkedIn still survives. This just goes to show how hard it is to come with a viable alternative. The only way to come with an alternative is to link your network to Facebook, which Facebook won't allow, and still doesn't give users much of an incentive to use your network and not Facebook's.
Re:a certain lack of users (Score:4, Insightful)
Can someone explain exactly what changed in Google's user agreement that gives them some new horrible power that they (and pretty much every other online account holder) did not already give themselves? What can Google do now that they couldn't already? I've seen so much concern about Google's new policy but very little to explain why. I briefly looked over the new policy when it came out and did not see anything that unusual. Maybe there's some more information sharing across their services, but I don't think there was much stopping that even before.
Re:a certain lack of users (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost Certainly (Score:5, Insightful)
I almost certainly read the article, and I almost certainly agree with the summary. You almost certainly read the article too, in which case you almost certainly agree that this almost certainly occurred. This is almost certainly the most accurate story ever posted on /. And almost certainly, this comment will be rated +5 informative.
It is either certain, or it isn't. If it is certain, then there is no doubt evidence to back up that claim. In which case you would simply say "it is certain that... because of..." Unless you are writing an article on probability theory, then we should expect facts. Not rumor dressed up as fact.
You know what we call things reported on web blogs that are almost certain?
Bullshit.
Here are some red-flag phrases the writer of the summary almost certainly read, and almost certainly ignored:
"Nobody would expect..."
"I'm going to reveal..."
"It all started when..."
"...something to the effect of..."
"...easily verified via his Wikipedia page..."
"I'm told by people familiar with the situation..."
"I project that..."
Well, before I totally dismiss the article let us learn about the author. Perhaps he is a well connected business savvy insider who has connections right at the top. Let's see what the bio says:
Chris "...is a business grad student at USC who is very fluent with technology..."
Okay, I can't go on any more. I'm going to be sick. Whatever journalistic integrity I had is being sucked dry by this one. Since when did USC grad students start getting taken so seriously?
Nothing to do with Aristotle (Score:4, Insightful)
Coincidentally I was reading The Big Short the other day and it was about a very similar theme - how human beings seem to want collectively to believe in something no matter that it is obviously bullshit, and that the people who try to point out that the emperor is naked get no thanks - they even seem to get blamed when the system collapses due to its unsustainability. There is not a lot of difference in principle between believing in the medieval idea of Heaven and believing that junk mortgages could be made AAA by clever repackaging, and that nothing bad would happen.
Marx wanted to find out the truth underlying human society. Jobs wanted to find out what would best satisfy the desires for gadgetry of middle and upper middle class Americans. They were both pretty good at what they did (Marx's analysis of capitalism has turned out about 100% correct), but in the case of Marx his followers screwed up. I strongly expect Jobs's successors to do exactly the same.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Give C= a bit more credit sir (Score:5, Insightful)
C= made a PC too in the 70s
C= made a cheaper home fun computer than Apple
C= made a better color computer than Mac System 6
The C= Amgia could emulate the Macs+OS via ROM module or (copy rom as most did via BBSs). The Rom in ram ran faster. The Emulator patched some OS calls to be asyncronous and ran faster and better that a real mac did. And also ran Amiga apps at the same time as Mac Apps.
You are correct (Score:4, Insightful)
But why cite Wikipedia when there is so much better information on early history of science? The article you cite describes Alhazen as an "early Islamic scientist" whereas he was pre-scientific, as was Francis Bacon (to whom I am very distantly related, so I have some interest in the subject). Descartes described the experimental method but was a long way from following it. You can argue that Aristotle, by proposing the validity of sensory experience as a clue to understanding the world, was the father of experimental method (experience and experiment have a common root) or you can argue that Galileo was (he actually did experiments to test his ideas), but to try and claim that the moment of truth lies somewhere in between ca. 350 BCE and ca 1600 CE is to try and measure accurately using a jelly stick.