Google engineer makes public rant about Google Plus

You know that moment you realise you've hit accidentally hit 'Reply all' on your profanity-strewn rant? That.

While Google engineer Steve Yegge's rant isn't anywhere near as bad as some, he did call Google Plus a "knee-jerk reaction," reports SiliconFilter. And instead of just sharing it with Google co-workers, he accidentally made it public. Oops.

The post mainly focuses on the horrors of working for Amazon (you can read the whole thing here, on, err, Google Plus), but there is an interesting section on how Google doesn't understand platforms, and how it may harm the company in the long term.

"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," Yegge writes. "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. 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."

He goes on to say Google Plus is a "pathetic afterthought," criticising it for launching without an API (application programming interface) -- a set of specifications that lets software programs communicate with each other. Instead, Legge says Google Plus should have launched with a whole platform built, he says.

"If you delay it, it'll be ten times as much work as just doing it correctly up front. You can't cheat. You can't have secret back doors for internal apps to get special priority access, not for ANY reason. You need to solve the hard problems up front.

"I'm not saying it's too late for us, but the longer we wait, the closer we get to being Too Late."

Harsh words indeed. But does he have a point? Let us know on our Facebook page.