The Replacement Web

I've gotten a fair number of comments asking about why I think Google+ is not competing with Facebook, but with the internet. So I'll go into detail now.

Let's think about how people use the internet.

Discovery

You need to look something up, find something. A reference picture of a cat. A house painter in DC. How AC/DC conversion works.

Right now, there are two ways to do this. Google search and Wikipedia. Google+ offers to radically enhance Google search: your connections and interactions in your Google+ network will validate you, so your travels carry much more authority than any astroturfer. Moreover, your connections will allow Google to guide you to exactly what you're looking for because your friends' friends' friends' already went there.

As for Wikipedia, I'm sure Google's coming up with an alternative. Probably +iPedia.

Oh, and some of you might use CraigsList for the more local stuff. Thanks!

News and Updates

I suppose a lot of users still go to, say, Wall Street Journal's or New York Post's site for news. Just browse on over at 9:30 AM and see what Murdoch wants you to know about.

However, a lot of us get our news via less restricted feeders. Things like Twitter, various filter sources such as Gawker, and thousands of specialty blogs that cover any kind of news you like.

You can argue that these don't have the gravitas of a major corporation with political aspirations, but that doesn't slow them down any. Already Google is a pretty important player here, not just passively through their search rankings, but actively through their news search, "top stories" section, and so on.

Not just news, of course, but also un-newsworthy things that matter to me, such as whether a friend's startup succeeds, or whether Germany is increasing or decreasing investment in solar power, or whether somebody's getting married. These also come to me through feeds, but mostly through different ones.

Google+ offers to take this and centralize it. Through Google+ circles and the I'm-absolutely-sure-it's-coming "extended circles", Google can easily aggregate posts and links and topics right to your Google+ page. It's probably similar to the iGoogle home in nature, but much more contextual and intelligent, so it can give you a wider variety of The News You Want without getting exposed to The News That Makes You Uncomfortable and still getting The Irrelevant Crap That Your Friends and Celebrities Like.

IE, Google+ is Twitter, Gawker, and Facebook all rolled into one, plus a few more things too.

Videos, TV, and Entertainment

A lot of people use the internet as a TV replacement. Just cruise over to Hulu.com and see what Murdoch wants you to watch. What, you didn't know News Corp has fingers in Hulu?

Let's go to YouTube instead. Oh, Google already owns YouTube.

Outside of actual hosting, most of your entertainment links come from filters and friends. These are the same sources that pass you news and updates, so the same things that will allow Google+ to dominate that arena will allow it to dominate this one.

Shopping

A lot of people use the internet to go shopping. Buying books from Amazon, doodads from Etsy, shirts from Think Geek, and so on. Right now, a lot of us pop over to the store that we know carries what we want, and simply click "buy". The times we want a comparison on prices, we go to an aggregator site that trawls through a variety of stores, finds the pricing, and maybe rates them by reliability.

Google probably won't ever have warehouses full of shirts and books to sell you, but they do already have the "shopping search" which does all the rest. Combined with Google Checkout and, probably, a new service with a catchy name like "Google+ iNetCash Turbo", Google is perfectly capable of becoming the go-to for internet shopping, especially if they can break Amazon's grip on the books market by offering alternate sources.

Summary

Anyone who thinks Google+ is fighting Facebook is thinking way too small.

Hell, Google may even physically replace the internet, putting up fiber optics between Google-owned locations.

All of this is going to result in a much smoother, easier to use internet.

Owned by Google.

The New Internet Economy

Like everyone, the release of Google+ has got me in a bit of a state. I don't use Facebook, because it's a nightmarish piece of social spyware. Instead of infecting your computer, it infects your life.

The lists comparing Google+ to Facebook are endless, and they always come out in Google's favor. This makes sense, Facebook is ancient and cobbled together out of random crap, while Google+ is a polished, modern, unified piece of code.

But in those lists somewhere is one "advantage to Google+" that really bothers me. It is this: "Google makes a better steward for your personal data than Facebook."

People are talking about "the attention economy" as if it's some far-distant future thing. But that economy is already here. Anyone who creates web content for a living already knows that. Google certainly knows it, better than anyone.

Google+ is a weapon in this economy. It is used to leverage attention: while it may not increase the amount of attention poured out by Google's userbase, it can deploy it far more effectively. Facebook could be said to be part of this "attention economy", but it wasn't weaponized. Google+ is weaponized Facebook.

This bothers me. The utter lack of privacy isn't really what bothers me, it's the utter lack of concern over it. Everyone's rushing to Google+ with glee. "What's the problem?" they say, "it's basically just Facebook, and I already used that!"

Google+ is weaponized. Google+ is not Facebook. It is a new layer of internet.

Google already tracks your searches, your youtube video views, your installed Chrome apps, your email buddies, the contents of your emails... it does this to better serve you. Ads.

While it is possible to block or ignore the resulting ads, you cannot block the monitoring. If you go out of your way, you can browse in privacy mode or such, but then you can't participate in the many kinds of content that rely on you having a valid (monitored) login. For example, YouTube won't allow you to view any videos with higher than G-rated content unless you let them (and Google) monitor you.

Google+ is simply the next step, helpfully allowing the users to build a context web. The contents of the internet as well as the individual Google users will be put into a vast and highly detailed web. Perfect for pushing ads, sure, and I think most people are thinking that. They go, "Okay, I don't really care, serve me some ads."

But the problem is the context web. This is an extremely valuable web of connections and preferences that can make your internet experience much more fluid and enjoyable. Unfortunately, the web of connections is wholly owned by Google.

Exporting your data won't help much, and Google knows it. It's not just about who your friends are, any more than your personality is about what genes you have. It's about the billions of links and cross-posts and retweets and conversations thrown about and followed.

That's the problem I have with Google+: it is an effort to build a new kind of social internet. I wouldn't mind if that internet were public - I think it's a fantastic idea. But they are aiming to build a Google-owned social internet.

Nobody seems to care.

Google and Blogger: Three Legged Race

And not a pretty one.

First, we're told to upgrade to Blogger 2. Cool new features, right? Okay.

Except anyone with a Blogger 1 account can't comment any more.

Now? If you have a Blogger 2 account, you can't comment on Blogger 1 blogs. And you can't change your account BACK.

Okay, pretty bad.

Next step?

They merged my Google acount with my Blogger account.

Didn't ask me, didn't warn me, no options. Just a "we merged 'em! Fuck you!"

Now, in my case, this did no harm. But some people wouldn't like it. People with multiple Blogger accounts, or people who want to keep their blogger account separate from their Google account because of, I dunno, questionable blog content, or a natural instinct that centralizing data robs them of valuable anonymity.

This is the first time I've seen Google treat their audience with such a callous disregard, and their product incorporation with such half-assed glitchy releases. Frankly, although it seems like over-reacting, it sets off little alarm bells in my head.