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What software technology stack does Google+ use?
Our stack is pretty standard fare for Google apps these days: we use Java servlets for our server code and JavaScript for the browser-side of the UI, largely built with the (open-source) Closure framework, including Closure's JavaScript compiler and template system. A couple nifty tricks we do: we use the HTML5 History API to maintain pretty-looking URLs even though it's an AJAX app (falling back on hash-fragments for older browsers); and we often render our Closure templates server-side so the page renders before any JavaScript is loaded, then the JavaScript finds the right DOM nodes and hooks up event handlers, etc. to make it responsive (as a result, if you're on a slow connection and you click on stuff really fast, you may notice a lag before it does anything, but luckily most people don't run into this in practice). Our backends are built mostly on top of BigTable and Colossus/GFS, and we use a lot of other common Google technologies such as MapReduce (again, like many other Google apps do).
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Is there any timeline for integration with Google reader. (even a simple "send to G+")
Sadly, as usual I can't comment on specific timelines or unreleased features, but as I said on another answer, this is near the top of my personal wishlist for Google+ integrations with other Google properties, and I know I'm not alone... ;)
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Will the content I gave a +! be part of a stream (like social bookmarking)?
We don't necessarily want everything users +1 to be immediately shared to the stream, since that might be too noisy and make people +1 less stuff. Part of why +1s are so useful right now is they only show up in context, e.g. if you search for a new digital camera, you may see that I +1'd the Canon s95, but if you don't care about cameras, you don't have to be bothered with that info. We also let users list their +1s on their profile page, which allows for vicarious discovery without being right in the stream. That said, clearly people often want a way to explicitly share something they've +1'd, so we need a better story there, and it's something we're actively thinking about.
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Will users be able to create hierarchies of circles (circles made from multiple circles)
There are definitely good use cases for this, but we worry about the complexity it would introduce. This might be a great "power-user" feature to build using our APIs (once they're ready, heh).
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What are some major features you'd like to see in Google+?
I don't control our overall roadmap, but personally I'm eager for many of the features other Google+ users have asked for recently: smarter ranking/collapsing/filtering in the stream and notifications (though I consider it a "good problem to have" that there's already so much activity on G+!), integration with more Google products (e.g. an easy way to share articles from Google Reader to G+), and an API so I can start hacking on cool uses of circles, etc. in my "copious spare time". :)
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Will we be able to link multiple Google Accounts to one Google Profile?
It's certainly something I've been lobbying for internally, though as you can imagine it'll be complex and tricky to do right everywhere.
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What were the most difficult specific technical challenges you faced?
Trading off consistency vs. availability is always challenging, and even more so in social applications where your actions affect other users, often in other data centers. For instance, adding/removing someone from a circle impacts (among other things): which posts they can see, the counts of people on your (and their) profile, suggestions (for potentially many people), and so on. Clearly some of these changes need to happen immediately/ASAP, whereas others could be a bit stale and that's ok. Picking the right trade-offs so our systems are fast and robust but users rarely notice any problems was (and continues to be) challenging, and in some cases required some very clever tricks in the backends.
Also, pretty much everything about hangouts is technically challenging. I don't know much about the details; I just know those guys are wicked smart. :)
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Is there plans for Google+ events or integration with Google Calendar?
As usual, nothing specific to announce, but clearly planning events and sharing stuff around events is an important part of socializing online, and as you might imagine, many of us on the team are itching to do something cool and useful in this area.
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How was engineering on Google+ run differently from other products at Google?
We put extra emphasis on engineering speed/agility--we try to release code updates on a daily basis while still keeping quality/stability/latency as high as you'd expect from google. This helps us move fast and respond quickly to user feedback. Otherwise, there's not too much magic to the process--just lots of passionate, hard working people trying to make sharing better. :)
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Is there a way to group circles together in the stream? I want to turn on only 3 or 4 of 10 circles to reduce "noise"
No current way to do that, but it's feedback we've heard a lot, and helping users manage the signal-to-noise of their stream (both manually and automatically) is definitely high on our priority list.
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How long did you spend on the UI R&D before building the final product?
We built and re-built many aspects of the UI many times based on user studies and dogfood feedback. And of course we're "standing on the shoulders of giants" in many ways, learning both from our previous social products and the industry at large. For instance, Andy Hertzfeld was working on a prototype "next-generation contact manager" before Google+ got started, and many of the ideas in that prototype formed the core of the "circle editor" UI we shipped, but we made numerous changes and revisions to the UI along the way, and we're clearly going to need to keep doing that going forward (for all aspects of the product).
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How crucial do you think the circle UI has been to the product's success?
The circles UI is definitely an important part of "making it easy/fun enough to create circles" so people do it. But the circles model itself (where you can add anyone to a circle that you want, they don't have to add you back, and your choice of circle is private to you) is I think the main key, since it lets people build their graph like it is in the real world, without artificial constraints or "social awkwardness".
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Will you be adding RSS/Atom feeds for public posts on G+?
To be honest, I'm surprised we don't have them (we did for buzz)...lemme look into that! :)
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How do you feel about the launch of Google+ so far?
We're happy to see that people seem to like the circles model, hangouts, the realtime UI, etc., and our servers seem to be doing pretty well so far, though we definitely got more demand faster than we anticipated. :) There's a ton still to do, so everyone is still hard at work, and we're trying to do our best to listen for feedback and iterate quickly.
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Whats the deal with not making Google Profile available to Google Apps users? Seems like this is long overdue.
We're working on it, sorry for the delay! See also Dave G's recent post on this: https://plus.google.com/100940716892313727285/posts/RmQAR4v4VRr
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Is there an ETA for a Google+ API?
Not yet, sorry! We're eager to get it out though, trust me! :) You can sign up at https://services.google.com/fb/forms/plusdevelopers/ to learn more as soon as we're ready.
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What's the ultimate vision for Google+?
I think our blog post covered it well: "We’d like to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software. We want to make Google better by including you, your relationships, and your interests." We think we can make sharing better and make Google more social (and useful) in the process.
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I've spent many time to group contacts on gmail. Would it be possible to export/syncronize them in google+ circles?
Yes, we really want it to be easy to create circles from your existing gmail contact groups, we just didn't get it finished in time for launch, sorry! Also, we want to make sure users fully realize that circles have a slightly different privacy model than contact groups (e.g. the people in your circles get notified that you've added them, and by default they show up on your profile), so people aren't surprised if/when they turn a group into a circle.
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How will Google+ connect to a Federated Social Web ?
I presented some ideas for this in my talk at Google I/O last year: http://www.google.com/events/io/2010/sessions/building-fluid-social-experiences-across-websites.html -- and also talked about it more recently in a podcast I did for IEEE Spectrum: http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/at-work/innovation/the-unified-field-theory-of-google -- in general, our circles and sharing model was designed to be "federation-friendly", and many of the building blocks needed to federate connecting, sharing, commenting, etc. are already in place, so now it's time to put the pieces together!
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Hashtags (or something similar) coming soon? We need a way to filter people's updates!
Personally, I want this too (and I know Chris Messina agrees, heh), but we don't have anything official to say about this (or pretty much any other specific future features or timelines).
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Who had final say over product decisions at Google+?
Vic Gundotra (Eng SVP) and Bradley Horowitz (Product VP) are our "buck stops here" leaders, though they don't force themselves into every decision the team makes. And of course, our founders often have strong opinions of their own... ;)
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How important do you think was the ability to add non-Google+ users to your circles?
Personally, I think it's a crucial feature to empower targeted sharing, esp. in the early days of the product when many of the people you want to share with aren't yet using Google+ or checking it regularly. After all, a lot of "targeted sharing" happens over email today, and while social networking is a much better UI for sharing/commenting/etc., it's only competitive if you can reach the same desired audience. This feature lets you do that, and it also exposes non-members in a useful way (seeing your content).
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You say "we often render our Closure templates server-side". What javascript engine do you use for this?
The cool thing about Closure templates is they can be compiled into both Java and JavaScript. So we use Java server-side to turn the templates into HTML, but we can also do the same in JavaScript client-side for dynamic rendering. For instance, if you type in a profile page URL directly, we'll render it server-side, but if you go to the stream say and navigate to someone's profile page, we do it with AJAX and render it client-side using the same exact template. See http://code.google.com/closure/templates/ for more info.
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I'd like to be able to "pin" a circle as my default rather than my "stream". Have you had any demand for this?
The circle filters on the left side of the stream used to be "sticky", but in practice this was annoying more times than it was helpful for most people. I would just bookmark the URL of the circle you want to check most often and maybe add it to your browser toolbar so you can easily click to see what's new there.
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How serious are you guys about user feedback?
Serious enough to let you all "Ask me anything". :) Hopefully people on Google+ have seen us already address several pieces of key user feedback and iterate on the product quickly. We're definitely going to keep doing that, so please keep your feedback coming!
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Now that Google+ has launched, are there any core features that you think need to be fundamentally changed?
It's too soon to tell, but I'm personally happy with the core circles/sharing/etc model, there's just a lot to do in terms of UI tweaks, making the stream and notifications smarter, improving new-user sign up, and so on. In social networks (or consumer software in general), lots of little tweaks in core areas like that can lead to a qualitative shift in overall usage and engagement, so I consider that as "core" as big new features.
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Will Google Buzz be merged or integrated with Google+?
I'm not involved in this directly, but here's the official response currently: Google+ won’t have any major impact on Buzz right now. Buzz users will still see a Buzz tab on their Google profile, and Buzz will continue working as it always has. Google+ users can also be Buzz users or can decide to just share their content using one of the products. Over time, we’ll determine what makes the most sense in terms of integrating the products.
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I'd like to be able to create a circle 'camping trip', 'politicians' and share that - good idea?
There's definitely a good use case for sharing circles with others. The trick is getting it simple and intuitive enough and not confusing people that circles are normally private to you (specifically, the names and who's in each circle). But it's something we've been noodling.
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What kind of applications will developers be able to build using Google+?
We're honestly still figuring out exactly what form our platform/APIs should take, but we're eager to hear input from would-be developers!
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Are there any plans for other types of Google+ accounts (bands, companies, etc)?
Yes! See https://plus.google.com/105923173045049725307/posts/E3mVj6nskaX for more info (and to sign up to be notified when we've got more ready here).
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Will Google+ integrate sharing posts externally via a Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
We do currently support this in YouTube, and many users do find it useful for reaching their audiences on other sites about their YouTube activity. I'm not sure if/when we'll do this in an automated way on Google+, but in the meantime, every post you make has a permalink (click on the timestamp next to your post) that you can share on external sites (and many people do).
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When will search and tagging be implemented?
Nothing specific to announce, but both are actively discussed topics internally with many Googlers asking for them too! :)
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Are you guys thinking of bringing out native iPhone/iPad/Android apps for G+?
Android app is already out (grab it in the market or look for the link on the right side of your stream). iOS apps coming (real) soon.
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How will you try to keep the initial positive momentum?
We're just trying to move fast, listen to feedback, iterate quickly, and participate actively in the product ourselves. Not sure we can do much more than that.
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Will you provide meaningful search/surfacing ("Track") on Circles and users?
Personally, I sure hope so (I think it could be really useful, and I hear we have some good search people around here somewhere, heh), but we don't have anything official to say about it right now.
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Will we ever be able to combine the data of our circles? Things like intersecting or excluding circles.
See the "Will users be able to create hierarchies of circles" answer.
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Would G+ have still happened if no one had come up with the circle graph concept?
I'm sure they would have still shipped something with a simpler / more familiar graph model. Personally, I don't think it would have worked as well, though I'm admittedly biased. :)
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How do you ensure that Circles has mass appeal and isn't just a power user feature?
I think everyone feels the need to share different things with different people--and the desire to be able to hear from certain circles without losing them in the overall stream. Real-world social relationships are complex and nuanced for everyone--so this is not a "power user feature" IMO. The trick is making the UI simple/fun/rewarding enough for mainstream users, and that's what we're working on. It can definitely be better, but I think we're off to a good start.
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Is there somewhere you publish in-progress features for imminent release?
Not really, but there are lots of chatty googlers using Google+, and people like me answering questions online, so hopefully we're not too opaque. :)
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Are their a core groups of non-Google users you test early iterations on?
Not really, beyond bringing in non-Googlers to our usability lab to get early feedback on mock-ups/prototypes/etc. We mainly "dogfood" it internally with Googlers, but clearly with social products it's really important to use them in "the real world", so it's great to finally be in a public Field Trial, and we're learning and iterating in the open every day now.
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How will Google+ make changing social networks less burdensome?
In the short term, there's not much we can do beyond making sure our data is available for export and building as many import/connect bridges as other sites' terms of service allow. But as I outline in a recent podcast I did for IEEE Spectrum (http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/at-work/innovation/the-unified-field-theory-of-google), I'm hopeful that Google+ can help us move the social web towards a more distributed, federated world where different users can use many/different tools and they still all stay richly connected.
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Are updates release all the time, or do you roll out a once a week batch?
We try to do a full push (almost) every day, and we sometimes sneak in patch releases too if needed. But there are humans in the loop, it's not a "auto-push if all tests pass" situation or anything like that.
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What aspects are you in charge of working on next?
Personally, I'm currently focused on the sharing UI (the "share box", as we affectionally call it). But I try to keep my fingers in as many other pies as I can get away with, esp. the circle editor and related UI.
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Can you say anything about the ballpark number of users or growth rate?
I can't share official stats on user growth so far, but our Executive Chairman did make some comments about it recently, which you could read e.g. at http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/09/eric-schmidt-on-gauging-googles-success/
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Is there going to be any integration with the retired Google Wave?
Probably not (unless perhaps someone does it via APIs).
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How is/will Google Docs sharing be integrated with Google+?
I don't think there's any integration currently. What would you like to see here?
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What distribution of circle size do you expect?
Too early to tell, but I hope they end up mirroring the distribution of people's real-world social circles: several smaller ones (close friends, family, surfing buddies, whatever) as well as a few larger ones (friends from college, coworkers, etc.) and also a fairly large list of people you follow because they're interesting but don't know personally.
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How important do you think Google+ is going to be to Google Search?
Google's had social search for a few years now, and +1 buttons more recently. In both cases, I hope Google+ gets a lot more users connecting and sharing a lot more stuff, which should then make social search a lot more useful.
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What do you wish you would have done differently now that it is out?
I think we all wish we'd been able to ship this sooner, but we revisited and revamped many aspects of the product several times internally based on usability and dogfood feedback (esp. aspects of the circles and stream model/UI), and in the end, I think it was the right decision, however painful at the time.
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Where can developers get and provide information regarding the design of the API?
If you're interested in the upcoming Google+ developer platform, please sign up at https://services.google.com/fb/forms/plusdevelopers/
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Plans for interest graphs combinable with Circles?
We gave everyone a default "Following" circle for "People you don't know personally, but whose posts you find interesting." So that's a good way to use the circles model to connect to people/topics you're interested in. You can also use Sparks to get news/photos/videos/etc on topics you're interested in and them share those stories with your circles.
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Can you share more insight on how you QA new features/enhancements to limit bugs without sacrificing speed?
Nothing much magic, just code reviews on every new check-in, lots of unit tests, lots of integration tests, some automated tests, and a lot of hardworking QA engineers.
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Can we expect G+ + Gmail becoming the fulcrum of all kind of communications?
I'm not quite sure which lever we'd be balancing on this fulcrum or what we'd be trying to lift, but I do use both Gmail and Google+ a lot, and I hope they'll work even better together over time. Of course, I also still use lots of other communication tools, and I'm sure that won't change anytime soon either.
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How many people did you work with on Google+?
We're a surprisingly small team (esp. by Google's standards), but we try to make up for it with passion and speed.
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What do you think about the idea of Google buying Stumbleupon and integrating it into Google+?
Hmm, not sure, but I'm tempted to answer by sending you off to a random-but-useful page for more info. :)
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Did you use Sergey Brin's silhouette for the generic person picture? Outlook 2010 used Bill Gates' mugshot.
Don't think so, but now I kinda wish we had.
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What did you code the server-side? java? jsp? gwt? guice? I would be especially intrigued if any Go snuck in there
Lots of Java, no JSP, no GWT, lots of Guice, no Go. :)
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Are all Googlers encouraged(or even, mandated) to be on Google+?
Googlers are not mandated to use Google+, but most are very eagerly doing so without prompting. :)
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What's the average number of people in a hangout?
Mean or median (they're probably different, though I haven't seen the full histogram). In any case, the maximum simultaneous participants is 10, and they all start out with 1, so I presume the average would be somewhere in between, weighted to the low end (hangouts rock for 1:1 video chat too). If you're Vic on the other hand, the average is always 10. ;)
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Were there any Wave libraries used in coding Google+?
Not that I'm aware of, though it's possible some low-level stuff got reused. Wave was mostly written in GWT though, which we don't use at all on Google+.
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