Google senior engineer, Steve yegge, publicly posted around 4000 plus words about google analyzing its understanding of platforms and calling Google plus a ‘complete failure’.
He said:
Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo),” he wrote. “We all don’t get it.
He also critisised his former employee Amazon for trying to get a platform similar to Facebook before calling google plus a major fall in Google history after orkut, google buzz and wave.
He mentioned that Facebook has 20 times more users than Google. Reason being : not diverting their users from the purpose of social networking.
Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that’s not why they are successful. Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work
Further saying:
So Facebook is different for everyone. Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars. Some spend all their time on Farmville. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so there’s something there for everyone.
Google, in an attempt to create clone of facebook, tried to add games to google plus too and that was a disappointment too.
That one last thing that Google doesn’t do well is platforms. We don’t understand platforms. We don’t ‘get’ platforms. Some of you do, but you are the minority. … I was kind of hoping that competitive pressure from Microsoft and Amazon and more recently Facebook would make us wake up collectively and start doing universal services … as our top priority from now on. But no. No, it’s like our 10th or 11th priority. Or 15th, I don’t know. It’s pretty low.
Steve Yegge posted it to his circles wednesday and immediately removed it stating that it was his personal opinion. He mentioned that the google censoring team was kind enough to not consider it an issue, probably showing that they “agree” to his views!
Is google plus really a failure? Despite 1269 percent spike in traffic after google plus being opened to public in september, the traffic declined by 60% in just one month.
So its not just about getting people register, its to have them coming back!