zlacker

I always remember the pointless integration of Google+ into YouTube that simply annoyed everyone. There's surprising willingness to damage an existing successful product to try to save a new struggling product.

Microsoft has also tried hard to push Edge, annoying nearly every Windows user on the planet, with no real success.

>>nitwit+(OP)
It's the branding. When the button that explored the internet said "internet explorer" it was so obvious. Then every OS component had to become its own brand. Why can't it just be called "internet"?

>>nitwit+(OP)
Frankly it's how they insist themselves onto their potential users. When I toyed around with Edge a year or two ago, just to get the t-shirt, it was impossible to set a custom home page for first-open instead of MSN crap. New tabs could be customized, but not the initial page. Apparently they fixed it since, but I still don't see Edge as a serious browser, just another rent seeking marketing tool.

>>nitwit+(OP)
The Google+ thing was a great example of bonus-driven product design. My understanding is that effectively everyone at Google was told that their annual bonus would be directly tied to how well their team's products supported the rollout of Google+.

>>simonw+E4
You look at ~15 year old comments and it's people replying to people that aren't there

>>nitwit+(OP)
Yeah - Google really tried to get people to use Google+ but it always sucked.

YouTube, while Google nerfed and downgraded it, still works to some extent, though AI generated "content" is such a waste of time.

> Microsoft has also tried hard to push Edge, annoying nearly every Windows user on the planet, with no real success.

https://www.w3schools.com/browsers/

Well for tech users it is at around 12% or so, give or take. More curiously Google chrome share dropped a little. I have no data about this, e. g. one website is too little info anyway but I suspect that Google killing ublock origin was a reason; right now I am using firefox and though it has tons of issues too, being able to lock away pointless "content" is so vital for how I browser and access information online.

>>nitwit+(OP)
That was the only time when YouTube actually had a proper comment system and you would actually get notified when someone replied to you consistently.

I wish they'd've kept the parts people used the most.

>>nitwit+(OP)
Also Teams and OneNote.

If you're on Windows 11, search for "Startup Apps" and disable CoPilot, Teams and OneNote (if you don't use them). It'll speed up your system.

CoPilot is a great name. But Microsoft being Microsoft even messed that up. Apparently there's a Github CoPilot and a Windows CoPilot, and they're different.

>>nitwit+(OP)
>Microsoft has also tried hard to push Edge, annoying nearly every Windows user on the planet, with no real success.

False, Edge is actually decent product and viable replacement for Chromium based browsers.

I use Firefox daily, but at work Edge is my way to go

>>nitwit+(OP)
I actually think Google+ was a good idea and it's a shame google now has a dozen different products with completely different social identities. Facebook does this right, you have one profile.

Youtube comments might not be a cesspool if they were tied to your "Google identity".

>>stickf+e9
I'm always puzzled by such a claim. One can look at Facebook to see the comments people put up tied to their real name and find no shortage of utterly abhorrent comments. Not sure why there's such a pervasive memory-holing of this when people talk of wanting to tie the ability to comment publicly to peoples' identities.

>>tester+T8
Agree. I gave it a shot recently after being a hater of MS browsers since the 90's and am actually very happy with it. I love the Workspaces and syncing features. Arc had something similar, but Arc started to stall out remain frustratingly buggy. Edge is now my go-to...

>>tester+T8
Edge /is/ a chromium based browser, it makes sense people wouldn't feel the need to download Chrome unless they want to use their google account to sync devices.

>>simonw+E4
That's exactly it. In every large corp I ever worked at, the bonuses for managers always depended on whatever company initiative was happening at the time.

Incentives almost always drive the outcome.

>>rocksk+E9
Comments in Facebook may not be perfect, but they are vastly better than youtube comments. This is a false equivalence.

>>stickf+da
Our experiences differ in that regard. And no it isn't a false equivalence since Facebook's "use your real ID" commenting system is directly comparable to any proposed system to mandate use of someone's ID to post on other platforms.

>>stickf+e9
Youtube comments have been nice and constructive for a few years now

>>stickf+e9
Has been said many times, but Google+ was hoping to be as good as Google Reader and Google Buzz already were for people. Was a surprisingly good social layer on top of article aggregation that largely worked by leveraging GMail.

What they were not, of course, was a replacement for the "town hall" dream of social capture that places like Facebook are hoping for.

And, I'm a bit hazy, but didn't Youtube try and force comments to be tied to your google identity?

>>direwo+01
> Why can't it just be called "internet"?

Because the world wide web is just one of the many applications that is possible to implement on the internet infrastructure.

>>simonw+E4
That is sooo google. Every big tech company has a defining trait. Microsoft is evil. Microsoft doesnt care about customers and never will. Apple is expensive. No matter what they produce, it will cost more than the alternatives. Such things are in the corporate DNA and we should not expect change in our lifetimes. Google? Google is internally focused. Every google product exists to leverage or prop up the others. The value of any product, new or old, is judged only by how much traffic/business/money it can funnel to others. Any product that doesnt support, even if profitable on its own, is a threat.

>>rocksk+E9
> I'm always puzzled by such a claim. One can look at Facebook to see the comments people put up tied to their real name and find no shortage of utterly abhorrent comments. Not sure why there's such a pervasive memory-holing of this when people talk of wanting to tie the ability to comment publicly to peoples' identities.

This should give insanely obvious evidence that clear-name policy does not lead to a more civilised discussion. I mean, everybody who went to a public school [in the American sense of the word] already knows this well: "everybody" knew the names of the schoolyard bullies.

The political wishes of clear-name policies are rather for surveillance and to silence critics of the political system.

>>nitwit+(OP)
I'm still super mad at Google+ because it was clearly the cause for Google Reader been killed.

That's when I started losing trust in Google as a company.

>>tester+T8
I really enjoyed Edge after it launched, but when they stuffed in all of the shopping plugins and integrations I bailed on it.

>>starik+ba
It's almost as if that's what incentives are for. Whether the outcome is the intended one is of course another question entirely.

>>direwo+01
I'm sure soon enough it'll be renamed "Copilot 365 Explorer" or something similar.

>>profsu+p7
Those are just two of the several Copilots MS now has, including re-branding the entire Office suite as Copilot… It's is a brand - as you said, a name – not a product.

>>veqq+Oa
Maybe this is just me only subscribing to channels where people behave in the comments and the channel owner actually does some moderation, but I actually kind of agree.

Sure, you find disagreements and arguments, but you don't get the 'ur mum gae', the reductio ad Hitlerum, the dongers, and the outright insane takes and paragraphs of all caps that I would expect from Youtube comments. Meanwhile, every time I open Facebook because of some event I need to press 'going' on, I get a glimpse of some inane take or someone writing in all caps because reasons.

There have been a few waves of comment spam, but maybe Youtube actually managed to curb that now? Only took them two or so years.

>>profsu+p7
> Apparently there's a Github CoPilot and a Windows CoPilot, and they're different.

Given xbox one x and xbox series x, I still don't know which one is the latest one.

MSFT not being good at naming things is not new.

>>aleph_+Re
It does change people's behavior. Perhaps the average person will use more polite language? But it's not uncommon for me to see dehumanization, threats, and calls for literal mass-murder-of-entire-demographics genocide promoted with polite language. Sometimes used by journalists. Sometimes by academics. Sometimes by podcast hosts. Sometimes by their fans. Sometimes by politicians. All using their real names.

I frequently encounter people using their real name saying my family deserves to die. Who would, in a heartbeat, threaten my employer by dint of a relative's place of birth.

Not having my real identity behind my posts is my only means of keeping myself safe from extremely sick people online who have a culture of intimidating into silence those that express views or belong to a demographic they detest.

>>tester+T8
Does Edge share your browsing history with Microsoft?

>>simonw+E4
I was at G when "mobile first" was the slogan, and it led to "odd" choices such as designing and leading with a travel app rather than the web site. Perhaps locally suboptimal, but in the long run brutal forcing functions were needed to move a company as big and successful as Google into something new. I hear that going all-in on AI was internally disruptive and probably had some bad side-effects that I'm ignoring, but in hindsight it was the right thing to do. When ChatGPT, perplexity, and you.com came out, my immediate thought was "Google is toast", but they've recovered.

>>egl202+xn
Google is certainly looking better than stack overflow.

>>Sharli+qi
I'm holding out for Copilot 365 Explorer Enterprise Edition.

>>aleph_+pe
They were asking about "internet" versus "internet explorer", so that's not relevant.

>>egl202+xn
> I hear that going all-in on AI was internally disruptive and probably had some bad side-effects that I'm ignoring, but in hindsight it was the right thing to do.

That's the opposite in my experience. It is driving long term google audience away from google's paying products.

>>shevy-+J5
My experience of Google+ was that it didn't suck, it just didn't offer much Facebook didn't already offer. So why would anyone use it. And then they started automated posting on Google+ for when you did something like comment on youtube, it would make a post on G+ which pissed people off.

>>veqq+Oa
You're right. Youtube comments are great now. Granted, it means you can't have controversial conversations there, but that's not what they're for.

>>aleph_+pe
Looks like the context understander has logged on. Welcome!

>>egl202+xn
My take away from mobile first G was “sites need to be fast right guys for mobile?” -> amp -> actually let’s hostile take over the web, oh actually well rework chrome auto sign in, oh actually … just a long string of user hostility