G+/Google information everyone should know

[merhawk]

Andy Carvin of NPR spoke with Google Chairman Eric Schmidt for a few minutes. Per the conversation, Schmidt acknowledges/states that "G+ was build primarily as an identity service, so fundamentally, it depends on people using their real names if they're going to build future products that leverage that information."

Identity Service != Social Network, Eric Schmidt. And you're billing G+ as a social network. Just sayin'.

Todd Vierling looked into the Profile Real Name issues. He discovered that these issues are about more than just G+. It looks like the endgame will end up involving most, if not all, of Google Products.

[reposted from my journal]

Comments

[the_future_modernes]

Thanks for reposting! Google continues to scare the hell out me and I am seriously planning to leave.

[brewsternorth]

You are, apparently, not alone. Someone's drawn up a linkspam of other available services (amusingly, Dreamwidth rates a mention) that do some of the same things various Google products do without being Google.

Me, I'm wondering if Hushmail is worth the annual fee. It might just be... I'd keep my gmail, but the idea of a not-Gmail that I have a little more fine-tune control over is appealing.

[ajnabieh]

This is really starting to worry me, since the central place I keep one of my online identities (one radically unconnected from my meatspace IDs) is on gmail. (Well, actually, it's mainly an LJ/DW identity, but it all started with my gmail account, and that's what links it all together.) At some point, are they going to tell me that I can't use Pseudy McPseud's email account any more, because I don't have a birth certificate saying Pseudy McPseud? Or say I can only keep the account if I announce publicly that P McP is Real Name, and link those accounts together?

*taps fingers nervously*

[lexicalcrow]

Yeah, I think it's time I backed up everything onto non-Google places, just so I have somewhere to bolt to if I feel the need to get rid of Google. :/ I don't use much bar email and calendar (and lurk on G+), but still.

Google, I like you, generally, but you're beginning to scare me now.

[merhawk]

You're welcome.

The thing is, it's not Google itself you should be concerned about, per se. It's about linking too much of your data in one place, in a situation where you're the product instead of the customer.

I've been advocating splitting your data up for a long time, as well as paying for your email. Just because it's pay doesn't mean that they're your advocates; however, businesses are more likely to listen to you if you're paying them.

Going back to Google, they haven't suddenly "turned evil". They've always needed to monetize the individual user, because that's how they get their money. They're just getting more blatant about it now. In addition, if they hadn't stated up front that the naming convention for G+ was going to be to "use the name your friends, family or co-workers usually call you", it wouldn't have ever blown as big as it's gotten. If I'd known when they were setting it up that they wanted a Facebook type naming convention, I would never have gone there. However, by acting as if I could use the name that everyone calls me (Hawk), and then reneging after I sign up and give them data... classic bait and switch.

[merhawk]

I always suggest paid email. If you pay, you're the customer instead of the product. I've never used Hushmail. I've used Sonic for years. You don't need to use them as an ISP or be in any specific geographic area. You pay approximately $20/month for up to 5 email boxes. They have awesome spam filtering, and excellent customer service.

[merhawk]

Hate to tell you, but they've already started doing some linking behind the scenes on some accounts. The speculation is that it was done if you used your primary email address as the backup email for the account.

That being said, it looks like if you don't use any services that requires Profiles, it shouldn't matter to being able to use the account. If you use a name that looks "normal", where normal seems to = White Middle America, it shouldn't matter to being able to use the account.

Whether you want to use your account or not, that's another question. I'm "lucky" in the sense that Google has always been my search engine. To fragment my data, I use different free services when I need a throwaway account. I don't do online calendering, I pay for my picture hosting, I don't blog via Google, etc. So if I lose my G+ account - I only lose G+. Many people who are on G+ don't have as much "freedom" as I do when it comes to how they want their name to look.

[the_future_modernes]

Unfortunately I can't afford that at all. So withdrawing from google is the best I can do at the moment.

[syntheid]

I use Hushmail as a separate account for sensitive data like bank/credit card statements, etc. I actually used a free account for a long while before upgrading so I could use IMAP access, as the web interface is useable, but not great. Though they do have an option to forward a stub email to let you know you have new mail, so that at least allowed me to notice if I had mail and check it. I'm not sure it's particularly more flexible, though-- at least, I find it more rigid and difficult to deal with compared to gmail, actually, if you're using the web interface.

(Personally, I'm playing around with Fastmail, which may be a decent switch from gmail for all my regular mail for me-- seems a bit more flexible in terms of filtering and search with Sieve, while offering additional services like file hosting. And it's pretty cheap, as well, which is nice.)