Sun, 03 Jul 2011
How I feel about Google+ (not thrilled)
Image credit: Lake Shimmer by (nc-sa) cobalt123.
The beautiful photo above is what reflections should look like. If you don't like Google's shimmering +1 buttons, try the convenient AdBlock filter Tom Morris wrote. I also block this image.
I have been reading a lot about Google+. I'm sure a lot of people put a lot of hard work into it. Lots of people seem to enjoy using it and appreciate its features. For my part, right now, when I see Google+ mentioned, the smile vanishes from my face.
I just have a few thoughts.
It's anti-competitive. If you could ask Google, "How much for a shimmering +1 button next to every search result?" you would be laughed out of the room. But they managed to offer themselves that unique marketing opportunity. I know that (1) most regulators who see this anti-competitive behavior won't see it as an anti-trust violation, and (2) the damage is already done, and no retribution in the future can act fast enough to fix the unfair advantage Google gave itself in the Internet-mediated personal communication (and ad sales) markets.
The shimmering is distracting, making my online search experience worse. I know that Google is holding nothing back; they are willing to distract me from my intended use of Google in order to branch out their business. (If you haven't seen the shimmering +1 button, it's next to every web search result, and if you mouse over any part of the result, it does a wavy dance.)
The most-touted feature is a clone of Diaspora. This by itself is fine; software should help users by having the best features imaginable. But the enthusiasm I've seen within the free software community (like when I read about Google+ on Slashdot and Planet Debian) should at least recognize that Google "circles" are a clone of Diaspora's Aspects.
Centralization on the web feels like a personal attack. Corporations on the web are like unstoppable machines rolling us toward a future of corporate eavesdropping, central points of failure, and end-users sold en masse to advertisers. It enables a future of individual "platform owners" who can change the lived experience of untold hundreds of millions with tweaks that benefit their actual customers (the advertisers). There's not much I can do about that. I happen to take this personally: I am part of a small culture of people who run their own mail and web servers and understand the importance of software freedom. This is a part of my identity. I watch as its traces online vanish, replaced by something more efficient and terrifying. It makes me sad.
I'm probably going to end up using it despite all these pain points. That's how I know that I am being steamrolled. The reasons I have given above are not reasons to not use Google+. They're just reasons that I'm going to frown all the way to the address bar.
In weeks to months to years, the service will grow an enthusiastic userbase. At that point, personally, I'll have to make a choice between connecting with those people on their terms, or not staying in touch with them. Already, professionally, the idea has already come up on #openhatch that Google+ could help us reach people willing to contribute to open source. Are my gripes worth holding OpenHatch back, or worth isolating myself over? Probably not.
