The difference is that Google+ tried to be Facebook. And Lemmy is just Lemmy.
Yeah. If you ever have the choice to try to be Facebook… don’t.
Lemmy is Reddit in case you didn’t notice
God please no. Let Lemmy not be Reddit.
Google did write golang and Google likes killing everything it touches Lemmy is written in go…
Lemmy is written in Rust. I currently don’t know if there is fediverse server software written in Go tbh
It was a joke and a jab at Google. But how does rust get hacked. That’s unnerving
Is it now? Github says it’s Rust at 80%. And a layer of rust is a good protection again further rust 😃
Honestly I am just going off of my preconceptions on this golang presumption. I tend to bet often that a rust or go based product is going to win out in most cases.
This is not how rust works, rust is blooming and eating ever deeper. Green Copper-Patina on the other hand is a protective layer.
I don’t think anyone is going to create a coding language called Green Copper Patina.
Thinking about it that way, that would actually be a good name, but I bet it would be a favourite in the Linux crowd.
I had “weathering steel” in mind, butt you’re right, even in this case, rust still eats at it, just slower.
12 Years ago… I’ve zero interested in Google+
I remember getting a few of my friends to try G+ with me, then getting in and realizing we were the only ones there. Feels like Lemmy already has more people than that ghost town ever did.
Facebook and Google was always about friends family and local before any random and stranger interaction becomes relevant.
Reddit and Lemmy is all about strangers. Oftentimes you dont even want people to know you or care about that. So userbase is way easier to create without feeling as if it was too small.
Facebook started locally and slowly created circles until the entire world found their friends and families and joined themselves
You were expecting Facebook, but google plus was always a creature more resembling Reddit and Lemmy. It was an aggregator, and source of discussion.
Anyone remembers wave? Or what was it called - was definitely ahead of its time.
I will literally never forgive them for shutting Wave down and will complain about it at any given opportunity.
I had forgotten all about Wave. My friend and I were super hyped when it came out but we ended up rarely using it.
I think it’s time hasn’t even come jet, but I also can hardly remember what it actually was.
Even though it failed a lot of the features it introduced like collaborative work were carried over to their GSuite/Workspace apps later.
I was so excited about wave when it came out. Genuinely thought it would replace email and sms.
RIP twitter API’s
It had a futuristic feeling to it.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/p6pgxLaDdQw
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Oh damn that’s actually really cool! I’m glad some of that functionality made it’s way into Google Docs but I can see the missed timeline now where Google Wave took off
Some of these are fucking wild
Killed over 1 year ago, Cameos on Google allowed celebrities and other public figures to record video responses to the most common questions asked about them which would be shown to users in Google Search results. It was over 3 years old.
Imagine googling “does Bruno Mars is gay?” and Bruno Mars himself shows up to tell you if he is or doesn’t
Dammit, Cameo is dead?
I honestly loved the concept and would probably have been a customer if I could afford it.
Contrary to your description, it was mostly celebrities doing custom greetings for fans, sometimes as themselves, sometimes in character and usually bought for people as a surprise gift.
Amongst others, there was Jim Rash wishing a Community fan a happy birthday in character as Dean Pelton and dozens if not hundreds of short to medium length videos of Dave Mustaine from Megadeth recording super wholesome and sincere messages for specific fans.
Can you honestly tell me that doesn’t sound great?
I think Cameo is different from “Cameos on Google.”
I thought it was a made up product I seen on a movie, I can’t remember what movie it was, though.
Jurassic Park?
i think it was about this d list personality or a washed up actor who needs to top up and do his cameos to increase his net worth, and his manager reminding him to do the cameos.
I dont even know if what i remember is existing or just a figment of my imagination. Lol. Just goes to show how fucked up our memories have become due to our online activties.
You’re talking about a non-Google product called Cameo.
Cameo = not-Google. Celebrities record videos per fan/follower request.
Google Cameo = Celebrities record short videos as responses to Google searches about themselves.
Similar, but different.
Ah ok, that’s a relief! Thanks for clarifying 🙂
Hahaha, I’d pay to see that
Damn I’ve never even heard of that but I wish I had, it seems like it’d be fun to fuck around and see how many recorded responses you can find lol
“Hi! Bruno Mars here to finally answer your question. Does I am gay?”
2017 - 2023
Service
YouTube Stories
Killed 15 days ago, YouTube Stories (originally YouTube Reels) allowed creators to post temporary videos that would expire after seven days. It was over 5 years old.
I found one I’m happy about. Good riddance!
Thank goodness…
What, but they still have YouTube Shorts.
Do shorts disappear?
This is extremely interesting. So many products that I’ve never heard of and many of them were actually around for 6-12 years before being axed or coming up on death soon. A lot of these I had heard of and even used occasionally over the years and I didn’t realize were gone now.
It’s amazing how many cool projects they’ve funded the creation of, but never really advertised, and subsequently killed
Why the F would they kill Google Domains. Don’t they own a freaking cloud? How is having a registrar not essential when you own a cloud?
Damn, that page is so interesting. Thanks for the rabbit hole.
Holy shit, Google has ADHD.
They actually sold Google Domains, still wild. No problem! :D
Selling it to Cloudflare. Dunno why, presumably not profitable enough.
Google Domains
Wait… This is a bit of a problem- all my domains are on Google Domains. Are there any other registrars with $12/yr domains that I can migrate to?
Edit: considering cloudflare
Your contract should be moved over to Cloudflare automatically and they have committed to honoring existing prices for now.
I thought it was sold to squarespace?
Any of them if you register for just one year lol
I used namecheap because they had .com for I think 11$ on sale, and I bought two domains for my stuff
But they sure ask a lot for cool names
I already have the domains I just want to transfer them away from squarespace
At this point I’m just waiting for them to axe YouTube out of the blue and with maybe 2 days warning. If Google announces a project nowadays I just assume they’ll kill it off at some point.
That is, indeed, the link that I posted 🙃
Wow, so many products I didn’t realize were dead. I remember when they were pushing Duo.
Some of them weren’t really killed, just renamed. Duo for example is now Meet
Google Reader. Never forget…
I still haven’t found a replacement for it.
I enjoyed Tiny Tiny RSS back in time.
Feedly
Can attest, Feedly’s pretty nice
NewsBlur. Been there since the unceremonious execution of GReader. It gets the job done.
I don’t really get what the hate was for Google+, it was better than the alternative/competitor at the time (Facebook)
It was invite only for too long, and then, suddenly, it was required for everything Google.
I agree, and the level of user on G+ was of a techy IT variety of person. It was great and you could have good conversations. Lemmy really has that feel now. Enjoy it till either the general public gets hold of it and it turns into a cesspool or it slowly dies a death.
Personally I hope to face neither of those scenarios, but history is not on our side.
It was definitely much better than Facebook at the time. Especially the concept of circles that they implemented.
I liked it a lot, honestly. Was a very cool community and Google’s app for it was awesome. The web interface was great too.
Google wasn’t comfortable in letting it grow naturally over time. They tried really hard to push on people by combining it with other more popular google products when it didn’t really make sense (i.e. Youtube). Also, as a teen at the time google plus just felt nerdy and weird. It didn’t really feel like something they cool kids would use so no one used it.
Yeah that’s how I felt too. I remember being excited about g+, then I also remember aggressively turning off any association to g+ because no one was on it and it kept pushing it in my face. Come to think of it gmail was similar, invite only and that, but it wasn’t forced even at release and they made it look a lot nicer than what yahoo and hotmail had going on at the time.
For a while, Google bonuses were tied to social integration. That’s why you saw the huge influx of insanity.
The concept of who you chose to share your status was cumbersome. It at least not auntie or uncle friendly
I don’t remember what it was called? Spaces?
I don’t remember what it was called? Spaces?
Circles. It was a killer feature at the time, the idea of different feeds for different groups, all in one profile. Too bad there weren’t enough groups to make it useful.
Being able to share certain posts with everyone (including your parents/grandparents) vs just your friends vs your work colleagues was a brilliant feature that seems to have just been substituted with private group chats instead. Seriously when I was a teenager the amount of stuff I thought about posting but didn’t because it would appear for everyone…
I still miss Google plus so much… It had the most intelligent groups of people I’ve ever experienced on social media both then, and now.
and from what i remember, staying true to typical google fashion, they fucked it up by not opening up the “beta” when they had a critical mass forming behind it. then only to force everyone into having a profile a year or whatever later. lol, too late. i think most of us understood that anything associated with google is assumed to be a never-ending “beta”, so no idea what they were thinking or waiting for.
I think it was definitely the super long beta period where you needed an invite killed it. I knew a ton of people who were interested that gave up
Reminds me of Bluesky which is also in a permanent beta.
That’s easy to say now, but Orkut (another Google social network, mostly used in Brazil) also had a beta invite system… And that helped it grow tremendously. The secrecy and “status” of getting invited made people go wild - they would even sell invites.
The strategy can work. It’s just very timing sensitive.
I’m not sure if I’m mis-remembering, but I believe my first Gmail account was by invitation. It was pretty much just an email account back then
Correct, I got my account invite from The Screensavers show with Kevin Rose. They were giving them out randomly to viewers.
Orkut was young when Facebook access was still restricted to college kids only. Google+ was dumb. You’d get and then it was just tumble weeds.
It was good but it didn’t really add enough or solve an actual problem. At the time, there wasn’t as much negative sentiment around Facebook. The circles were a neat concept but too much work to use for the average user.
It’s strange to note that if Google had just casually worked on the feature, started gradually integrating it with YouTube etc, they might have beat insta to the punch and also really capitalized on Facebook hate. Instead they made one massive marketing blunder after another.
Google+ forced itself on people. I didn’t want it so I stopped using my Gmail entirely. I imagine word of mouth caused people to avoid it.
And the ridiculous part on top of that is that it was the exact opposite situation at first. When it first launched, you had to be a friend of a friend of a Google employee to register or you weren’t getting in. It took me a about a month before a friend of mine studying CompSci at university with the kid of some Google employee was able to pass an invitation my way.
I get the purpose was to generate hype by making it seem “exclusive” like Facebook was in the early days, but it took way too long before the people who genuinely wanted to use it were allowed to openly register for it. It was like that for 3 months, and a lot of people who gave up on trying to get an invite lost interest after the initial buzz died down.
And then Google wasn’t satisfied with upsetting the people that wanted to use it, so they had to go and upset the people who didn’t want to use it by later forcing it on everyone with a Google account.
It’s kind of funny, isn’t this exactly what Meta is doing to everyone with an Instagram account? You have a shadow profile on Threads regardless if you signed up or not.
I wonder why the reaction is so different, maybe because they both are social media? Or maybe just good timing with the whole Twitter debaucle.
I think there is still concern. When Threads launched, the media was full of articles outlining commonly-stated concerns about privacy and the involuntary connection between Instagram and Threads.
The problem is that zoomers who are flocking to it in droves don’t seem to care about any of that. And I don’t think it’s due to ignorance, but probably more like generational defeatism.
Yes, there has for shure been a shift in the culture. Privacy doesn’t seem to be that big of a concern for most.
I’m not so sure it’s just the zoomers that are to blame, plenty of older people don’t seem to care either. But I do feel for the younger generation, having never known the freedom and joys of the pre-corporate internet. Then again, maybe ignorance is bliss after all.
Yea I was annoyed that they were making me sign up for google+ for my youtube account so I never tried it I just set it up so I could keep using youtube.
Poorly supported, forced integration with other google services, facebook was good enough TM for most.
Google mismanaged the shit out of it, which is a shame, because it really was a good platform.
If Reddit can make it for 12+ years, I’m sure Lemmy can too!
That’s what I’m thinking! As long as we can build our own positive reputation, I’m sure we’ll make it!
In 12 years, selfhosting will be so cheap and one-push-button easy that everyone will have their own instance and federated with each other. It will be called Neo-Geocities 2.0.
Related tech: https://small-tech.org/
deleted by creator
Oh man, this takes me back…
Both Neocities and Yahoo! licking their lips over that name.
There is now Neocities.org so I’d say you’re spot on :)
So, like p2p clients?
I can believe that, honestly.
I just get never get any of my friends to use Google +. It was just me and a few of my tech nerd friends.
Any hype it had was killed by the gated access that required invites. Plus, Facebook didn’t have your racist uncle on it yet. It was still fun.
Had a big following on G+, did a few courses and had a lot of fun in that network. Still friends with many of the people I connected with on there.
Never quite got that feel on Reddit and Lemmy won’t have it either because identities are hidden. But that’s OK, all platforms have a purpose.
I still can’t stand Facebook. Even though it makes me money, I feel the ick being on there every time.
Ha I am actually still friends with people I met on G+ as well. Before Pokémon Go Niantic had a game called Ingress and we organized teams and strategized on Google+ groups and chat. I don’t know how google messed it up honestly with the way everyone with gmail had an account…you could chat and there was audio and video calling that worked pretty well. It was also very clean and modern for the time. Oh well, Alphabet.
Google never really recovered from the attempt at “FOMO” by restricting most from accessing the newly hyped social media network.
By the time Google opened it up, people were already moving on to other platforms.
Although some instances do restrict new signups, imagine if they all restricted access? It would not be the same here.
Does anyone remember the asian (?) Platform “multiply”, long long ago, where you could upload music for your friends? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiply_(website)?wprov=sfla1
I really liked it back in the day, then it died. I hope Lemmy will preservere…
Hey, I haven’t heard that site name for a long time. I didn’t sign up though.
I’m still wishing the internet could go back to how it was in the 90’s so I’m hoping it will continue to look the same in 12 years.
This is why you should never adopt Google services, there’s a high chance they will kill it off given their awful track record.
At least they let me turn my Stadia controller into a regular Bluetooth controller ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I bought Cyberpunk for Stadia and received a Chromecast Pro and a Stadia controller with it for free. I sold them both which covered the cost of Cyberpunk which later got refunded when Stadia went offline. So I actually made money by using Stadia.
Same reason I don’t get emotionally invested in Fox TV shows.
I’ll still grumble about Gifted getting cancelled for the next 80 years /sigh
I think the biggest miss Google had was with Google Wave. It was way ahead of its time, and absolutely crashed and burned at launch because of the invite-only model.
I bought a Google OnHub router, which was amazing. It was marketed as the most “future-proof” router at the time. Then Google made Google WiFi mesh routers around a year later, and OnHub was never marketed or mentioned again. Now, in addition to my already concerning privacy issues around Google services, I don’t trust that they will release quality, supported products.
Chromecasts are pretty solid
It’s been a while since I’ve used a Chromecast, but they were always reliable.
I threw mine in the trash in less than a month, didn’t even bother trying to resell it and just wanted it gone. What a pile of fucking shit that thing was. I spent more time troubleshooting than watching.
I have a gen 1 Chromecast that I use almost daily, such a beast
I heard that Google is about to drop support of their older chromecasts. (You might want to look into this to confirm though)
I hope not!
I can’t say I had these problems back when I was using them, but that doesn’t mean much because mine are sitting in a box somewhere and worthless since most TVs and streaming players support it now.
I started reading your comment and thought “please be about Wave” haha. The funniest part about Wave is how they learned no lessons from it.
The invite-only model worked great for Gmail because it was an actual service with real utility and people wanted in (1GB storage was huuuuge). But with social networks, the courting ritual is reversed, because without a critical mass of users the product has no utility.
So what do they do with G+? Invite only 🤦♂️
And by then they had something like half the world running Android, with Google accounts… and didn’t just let them in. Youtube should have been a simple “if you want to check out G+, your Youtube account will get you in, otherwise carry on.” Instead they make it invite only and then bully youtubers into registering.
It’s just mind-boggling how little they understood about social networks after building such a wonderful piece of software for it.
I miss my Google music…
I mean this post has 1200 upvotes. Considering most people don’t engage with the voting system that makes me think that there’s a decent amount of people here. At the very least it means there’s a lot of people here who engage with the community. More come every day. If this post were on Reddit, it would be on r/all right now. That’s not bad for a community with a fraction of the users.
I think that in 10 years this place will be doing alright. I think the growth that’s happened in the last few months won’t last, but I think that growth will still steadily happen. The reddexodus doesn’t happen every day but with most social media platforms shitting their geriatric pants more and more lately, I think a consistent flow of refugees will come here.
No one is more shocked that I am that this post got more than six votes lol
