No Friendship Requests Necessary

There are no friendship requests in Google+. You just add people by email adress to circles. They will get a notification but if they don’t add you to one of their circles, they will not “follow” you. So the system is much like Twitter, where you decide who you are interested in and who not. This will probably prevent a lot of spam and take away all those nasty marketing opportunities to companies. I considered to be active on Google+ with my band but for what reason? Even if fans add a band to one of their circles it will probably not be the circle with their best friends that they will pay most attention to. But maybe we give it a try anyway!

No API Implemented Yet

What I am missing in Google+ right now is the opportunity to access this site via a strong API. I am sure that this will change once the site is successful.According to Rafe Needleman’s cnet Article the developer API will come once Google Plus is more mature.

The features and functions of Google+ will likely change substantially in short order. More functions will be definitely be added to the service, as well as increased integration with other Google apps. Giving developers access now might be premature, as some might built products that end up duplicating features that Google itself is just about to layer into the publicly available service.

Many Privacy Settings:

What other company but Google could know better about users’ privacy concerns. The network is centralized and not distributed. This of course is a huge privacy issue but one that most users don’t understand. For the average user who just wants to save his privacy in his social circle or extended social circle, Google+ is really great.

Great Usability Reminding of Apple:

The UI of Google Plus really is a strong thing. It just feels very good to use it. According to techcrunch especially the UIof circles goes back to no one less than Andy Hetzfeld one of the key designers of the first  Macintosh software.

Hetzfeld, who has been working at Google since 2005, is indeed the one we can thank for the better-looking interface on Google+, as he’s the design lead on the project. You’ll likely recognize his name from his time spent at Apple (1979 – 1984) where he was a key designer for the original Macintosh software team.

Response to Critique on other sites:

I read some blogs and articles saying that Google plus will not be able to compete with Facebook, that it is to late to enter the market and so on… Well, I would say that Google already has many advantages

• a huge user base
• fans
• a similar yet superior social networking product
• together with other google products they have a complete product
• android to push their social network to the mobile market
• a lot of experience on how to do things viral

I would also guess that the similarity to Facebook is intended. Great usability comes from consistency in design. It doesn’t take much time to learn from using Facebook to Google+. Some new things like circles have excellent usability and due to the similarity to the Facebook UI, the rest feels just easy to use. So this is not stealing or a lack of creativity. It is just the amount of perfection that you expect from a company like Google!
So join me and start inviting your friends to Google Plus. Here is how it works.

The Facts From an FTC Point of view

• Google is the leading search engine on the net.
• Companies and the FTC seem to believe that there is a bias. Google seem to display their own products in the search results more frequently than similar content from competitors (e.g. Maps vs. Yelp or Youtube vs. Vimeo).
• The combination is considered to an abuse of Google’s market share in search.

Google’s Reaction

You can read the official answer to these accusations on the Google blog. They don’t start a discussion about it but basically state their noble goals and achievements:

• Google supports open standards and open source
• Google does not try to lock the users in. Instead, contrary to most companies on the web, they have the data liberation front to give users the chance to escape from Google products and take their data with them.
• Competition on the web is hard and the alternatives are only one click away
• They believe in “user first” and create search in a way that satisfies the user
• Using Google is a choice. If they don’t put their users first, they will lose them.

You can find more detailed information on Google’s perspective here.

My Opinion.

1. First of all, Google products like Youtube belong to the most relevant products on the web. I am pretty sure an algorithm without any bias would rank resources from Youtube first and videos from other websites second.
2. Additionally, since search for rich media content like videos is much harder than text retrievel, it makes sense to use all the information you have for solving issues regarding information retrieval. So it is obvious that finding the relevant videos from Youtube is much easier for Google than finding the most relevant videos from other websites.
3. Google is a service offering a direction to their customers. These directions come fast and in outstanding quality. That is why Google became a world wide market leader in search. If their search results were biased and they would put their own products to the user, they would take a huge risk. If the user didn’t like the search result, they would quickly lose him as a customer.
4. Assume the accusation is true. It is still Google’s good right to do that. Web search is a very hard problem. Google is a normal enterprise. There is no law that web search has to be the most objective search that is possible. Especially since there is no universal truth or ranking to compare with anyway.

The internet is one of the hardest markets to compete in. If you change your product for the worse, the alternative is indeed only one click away. Therefor, antitrust investigations on the internet make almost no sense. By creating an extraordinary product, focusing on users needs and having high ideals, Google was able not only to remain successful over a decade, but also to continue growing. This would be impossible with a dishonest product on the web. So dear FTC, before chasing Google with antitrust investigations, I suggest to chase some other companies.
Yahoo: Look at their portal. Yahoo was the leading search engine before Google was launched. After a while, they started pushing a lot of additional products on their users. Many of them are still out there and produce good revenue streams for Yahoo. (Editorial News, Mail, …)
Facebook: They mislead everyone who has a fan page by not communicating clearly that having a thousand fans does not really offer the opportunity to communicate with all of them or their friends. Also, look a the Open Graph API. This API is everything but open. This name is one of the most misleading marketing devices I have seen in my life.
Microsoft: Internet explorer is still one of the most widely used browsers in the world. Talk to any technically savvy person and you will realize that this is not about a good product but rather because Microsoft abused their reach. By the way, in Google Chrome’s search box, you can choose right away which search engine should be your default. They don’t force you to use Google.
Facebook / Microsoft + Bing: If you find a person by searching for them on Bing and that person happens to be on Facebook, Bing offers you the option to send them a message directly without opening Facebook. Look at this video and decide for yourself. Remember Microsoft invested 240 $ to buy 1.6% of Facebook shares.

Apple: The popularity of the iPod allowed them to create the iPhone, a product locking in people. You cannot use certain standard products and software on it because Apple doesn’t want to pay the licence fee. You get locked in iTunes. There is almost no way to export your music out of iTunes to other systems or devices.
Ebay / Paypal: Well yes, Paypal solved problems. But was it neccesary to market it this aggressively on ebay?
Disclaimer: For all the companies and products I mentioned – except Facebook – I still think it is their right to do what I stated here. To quote a famous man: “It’s ok. Let the market decide. It is called competition.” (Eric Schmidt)
offtopic: I talked about how Google is not locking in users. Ther is a funny video from the onion network about this topic which I want to share with you:

Eric Schmidt: “What else could we do besides just informing people. ”
Walter Mossberg: “You could curate. ”
Eric Schmidt: “But we made the decission to not curate. We stay focused on open platforms. The apple model is the inverse of the Google model. And I think the competition is very healthy. The fact of the matter is that the apple model produces beautiful products of a specific market size and share with an awful lot of clever stuff going on that are entirely controlled by apple. The Google model ist just the inverse. It’s ok. Let the market decide. It’s called competition.”

Let’s try to understand what is really going on here!
Realize that google within a very short time just became market leader in the app market and take into mind that apple had several advantages in this market:

• first mover in the phone / app market
• superior hardware
• fashion brand. To have an iPod iPhone was just “hip”
• iTunes and the combination with music

We conclude:
It is all about being open and setting open standards. Just like the whole internet is!
If you are interested in more please compare for my article Why open source wins and then Jonathan Rosenberg’s post about this topic.

Apple:
“6. People have identified up to a year’s worth of location data being stored on the iPhone. Why does my iPhone need so much data in order to assist it in finding my location today?
This data is not the iPhone’s location data-it is a subset (cache) of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database which is downloaded from Apple into the iPhone to assist the iPhone in rapidly and accurately calculating location. The reason the iPhone stores so much data is a bug we uncovered and plan to fix shortly (see Software Update section below). We don’t think the iPhone needs to store more than seven days of this data.
7. When I turn off Location Services, why does my iPhone sometimes continue updating its Wi-Fi and cell tower data from Apple’s crowd-sourced database?
It shouldn’t. This is a bug, which we plan to fix shortly (see Software Update section below).”

This is redicoulus! This is no bug!

I have been developing software for many years. There are bugs in software developement. In this case it is very obvious that someone acted with full awareness of what he was doing. Thanks to this article and this piece of software I was able to extract the geo data from Nasir Naveed’s iPhone. Have a look at the table that he made available.

Apple is lying and distributing wrong information.

In their press release they state the following:

Apple:
“3. Why is my iPhone logging my location?
The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it’s maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location, some of which may be located more than one hundred miles away from your iPhone, to help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested.Calculating a phone’s location using just GPS satellite data can take up to several minutes. iPhone can reduce this time to just a few seconds by using Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data to quickly find GPS satellites, and even triangulate its location using just Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data when GPS is not available (such as indoors or in basements). These calculations are performed live on the iPhone using a crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data that is generated by tens of millions of iPhones sending the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple.”

Note the lie that location tracking with GPS can take several minutes! If that was true how come every GPS in a car is working right away? Modern GPS in cars are able to quickly calculate the locations even in moving objects that are changing location quite frequently.

Apple is receiving your profile of motion

Apple:
“5. Can Apple locate me based on my geo-tagged Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data?
No. This data is sent to Apple in an anonymous and encrypted form. Apple cannot identify the source of this data.”

It is true that for most research cases I can all of a sudden think of Apple does only need the anonymous data. but let’s be realistic. Even if Apple really would send over this data in an anonymous way. They could still do a meshup with the usual data they collect (your phone calls) and would probably be able to identify you quickly. In any case they have never asked your persmission!

Apple is obviously not even thinking to change its politics

Apple:
“In the next major iOS software release the cache will also be encrypted on the iPhone.”

ok tht is the coolest part! In Future iOS Apple will still store the data on your phone. They will probably still send it back to the Apple servers. But don’t wory, the data on your phone will be encrypted so that no one else but Apple can access the data! (not even yout) Thank you Apple! You must really be telling the truth when you say:

10. Does Apple believe that personal information security and privacy are important?
Yes, we strongly do. For example, iPhone was the first to ask users to give their permission for each and every app that wanted to use location. Apple will continue to be one of the leaders in strengthening personal information security and privacy.

Help to stop Apple spreading missleading information

It is very sad to see how a lot of big news sites are just skimming Apples press release and thereby help Apple to spread wrong and confusing information. Please pass on what you have discovered right now and don’t let Apple win over your privacy. Just use your Facebook account or Twitter.
Btw I don’t know about the law in other coutries but in Germany you have a two year warrenty for your product. So if this really is a bug this means that you could probably return your iPhone and get back your money. Have you ever considered to change away from your iPhone or have been unsatisfied? Well now is great moment to change!

Please send me your i phone’s location data

In the quoted blog  article and piece of software it is explained how you can extract your moving behaviour from your I phone. Apple has this data without even asking you. I am a researcher and I can think of many scientific usecases. So please do not only share your data with Apple but also with some people here in University. Just attach the logfile you extract from your iPhone to an email to r.pickhardt@gmail.com. I promise I will anonymize your data and only share it within the scientific community.
Btw you can find the full press release here