Bradley Horowitz: 'I don't think this was YouTube fanatics, there were some real problems with the integration'

When YouTube changed its comments system to use Google+ there was plenty of outrage online. Were the critics right? Google+ boss Bradley Horowitz said today that they were.

"To be clear, out of the gate we weren't doing so well, and a lot of that had to do with ranking, and a bit of an arms race around spam and abuse," said Horowitz at the Le Web conference in Paris today.

"I don't think this was YouTube fanatics, there were some real problems with the integration as launched, and it took us a few days to iron those out."

Horowitz defended YouTube's decision to use Google+ for YouTube's comments system, though, describing the change as "a very beneficial thing for channel-owners and for commenters" for the way they rank comments based on quality and social links.

"It means I can go to a video like Gangnam Style that has millions of comments that were useless to me a month ago as I tried to paginate through them, but now we're able to rank those comments in social proximity to me," he said. "They float to the top, and I'm able to interact with those."

Horowitz was interviewed on-stage by Le Web founder Loïc Le Meur, who questioned him about recent speculation that Google had a $4bn acquisition offer for social app Snapchat knocked back earlier in the year.

Lemeur had asked speakers from Facebook and Twitter similar questions earlier in the event, and Horowitz took his cue from their firm-but-polite denials, while praising the ephemeral-messaging startup.

"Like my colleagues, I have tremendous respect for Snapchat, they've obviously hit a real use case, and the usage we have seen amongst teens and young adults is stunning," said Horowitz, who went on to compare the Google+ Hangouts video-chat feature to Snapchat.

"Hangouts touches this ephemeral use case. When I'm having a conversation with somebody, it's even easier than 140 characters. I don't have to author anything: I just light up a Hangout, invite my friends and we talk. And at the end, it's not recorded," he said. "We've seen evidence ourselves that the use case of ephemeral messaging is very powerful."

Google's Bradley Horowitz on-stage at Le Web. Photograph: Stuart Dredge/The Guardian

Horowitz parried questions about Google+ as a rival to Facebook in favour of talking up its new Plus Posts feature, which turns brands' Google+ posts into interactive adverts that can be displayed and interacted with elsewhere on the web.

"It allows for much richer engagement as opposed to jus a display ad which is a means of generating brand value and awareness. This is something that allows me to engage in situ, I can stay on the site where I find the ad," he said.

"This is a mind-blowing expansion of the surface area of our product. Not only can these brands interact with users when they come to Google+ or to our mobile apps: now the web is the stream for the users... with content they can interact with if they choose."

Horowitz also talked about the bigger picture within Google, and its ability to "think in 10-year timeframes" about the kind of projects described by the company's chief executive Larry Page as "moon shots".

"We don't know if they will work, they make take pivots and twists and turns along the way, but they're worth doing because they solve the world's biggest problems if we get them right," said Horowitz, who cited Google's work on self-driving cars as a key example.

"When you think of the kinds of problems that can solve, both in terms of traffic... also you'll save lives with self-driving cars if we get this right, and pollution. There are so may benefits there," he said.

"i've ridden in the self-driving cars. It's an amazing feat of technology when you bet your life on this technology, and it's actually stunning to see. Immediately, you can see it's viable and it's a matter of time."

Horowitz added that while more here-and-now Google initiatives like Chrome and Android may not seem like moon shots, they started out as big, risky bets in their own right.

"They don't look like moon shots today, they look like successes today," he said. "Some of these things take a very long time to play out, but they're worth doing. At the end you get something like Android, which I think is a huge contribution to the world."

And Google+? Rather than trade active-user figures with Facebook and other social sites, Horowitz talked instead about some of the little details in Google's social network, like automatic photo-editing, as examples of its value.

"We analyse the contents of the photo and selectively fix things: we smooth skin so people look better and less wrinkled, and bring silhouetting and vignetting to photos," said Horowitz. "These are subtle things, and require huge processing power, but ultimately make your photos better."

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