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A Google engineer and advocate has slammed Google+, claiming it doesn’t understand how social networks operate and is almost beyond repair.
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| Google Engineer Steve Yegge |
Steve Yegge, an engineer at Google, posted a 5,000 word rant intended for Google employees alone to the very public internet. The rant kicks off with an assessment of Amazon, Yegge’s former employer, and then shifts a gear by ripping Google’s aspiring social networks to shreds.
“That one last thing that Google doesn’t do well is platforms. We don’t understand platforms. We don’t ‘get’ platforms,” Yegge began. His verbal diarrhoea then stained Google’s senior management.
“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). We all don’t get it.”
After, errr, noting some of Google’s most influential and fundamental seniors have no bearing on social networks, Yegge then criticised plus, calling it a “knee jerk rection” and a “pathetic afterthought.”
“Our Google+ team took a look at the aftermarket and said: ‘Gosh, it looks like we need some games. Let’s go contract someone to, um, write some games for us.’ Do you begin to see how incredibly wrong that thinking is now? The problem is that we are trying to predict what people want and deliver it for them.”
Oh how the people at Facebook must be laughing. I imagine they’re clutching their stomachs as they falling off their swivel chairs onto the monotone carpet. Having a Google employee, one who believes “Google does everything right”, claim plus poses no long-term threat to Facebook must be the kind of lark that leaves then gasping for air between sessions of laughter.
Following his rant, Yegge clarified the “post was intended to be shared privately and was accidentally made public.” Since its posting, Yegge has sought and was granted permission to keep the post live, endorsing his opinion that Google, despite its flimsy grasp on social networks, has one of the best work cultures.
Read: Google+ Crashes As 60% Of Users Flee
Google’s openness to allow us to keep this message posted on its own social network is, in my opinion, a far greater asset than any SaS platform. In the end, a company’s greatest asset is its culture, and here, Google is one of the strongest companies on the planet,” Yegge concluded.
