It has been a few weeks since Google+ appeared and was made available to a selected number by special invitation from Google itself. Not surprisingly, the Insider was not one of them. It appears that those taking up the ‘challenge’ were able to invite others and within weeks the number of Google+ users has reportedly swelled to 20+ million in just three weeks.
As Google’s answer to Facebook, Google+ exhibits many remarkably similar traits and, as one would hope, avoids many of the Facebook elements that make it more palatable for those suffering Facebook paranoia, including the Insider.
The Insider has been monitoring all the reports on the new social networking phenomenon to gauge whether it may be worth a try, but then alarm bells started ringing loudly. Google+ had already deleted all ‘non-public’ profiles weeks ago, but over the weekend decided to suspend all subscribers that didn’t have ‘real’ names. Users simply received the message: “After reviewing your profile, we determined the name you provided violates our Community Standards.” Then, poof, they were gone from the site.
To make matters worse, The Next Web reports that users were being stripped not only of Google+, but their entire Google accounts – Gmail, Docs, Blogger and everything else. So, you’ve been using Google services for years, you get invited to use Google+, you sign up presumably using one of the pseudonyms you’ve always used, then discover that the fancy new Google service doesn’t abide by the same rules, and you get unceremoniously dumped.
The TNW article also reports a conversation between Robert Scoble and Google VP in charge of Google+, Vic Gundotra (Gundotra was Scoble’s boss at Microsoft in a previous incarnation), where “he says it isn’t about real names …….. it is about having common names and removing people who spell their names in weird ways, like using upside-down characters, or who are using obviously fake names, like ‘god’ or worse.” This is despite the fact that Google+ does provide a ‘legal’ way to get around the pseudonym drama.
Those fuming over their accounts being suspended/purged won’t be satisfied with this, especially as there is no clear path for recourse. Scoble reports Gundotra saying that “they (Google) have made some mistakes while doing the first pass at this and they are learning.” Sure, you have to expect teething troubles with any service of this magnitude, but shouldn’t we expect better from the likes of Google, one of the earliest implementers and bastions of ‘cloud-like’ services?
The question is, does Google really care? After all, it seems to have a passion for trying something out, something new and exciting, but if it doesn’t work it just dumping it. Whilst it keeps making enormous revenues from its core business, and it is admirable that it continues to invest in new ideas and technologies, it is equally unnerving that Google just drops things if they don’t work out to its expectations. Remember Google Answers, Google Wave, Google Power Meter, Google Health, et al. Could the same happen to Google+? You bet it could! Which is another good reason to wait and see before diving in and wasting time establishing a presence on yet another social networking medium.
On the other hand, perhaps Google+ is simply a way for Google to garner what remaining bits of information about each of us that it doesn’t already have. And what a wonderful profile we provide, to anyone interested, via social networking. Google would be very interested. This information, alongside its search engine, is its most valuable asset, but combined could become a force terrible to behold.
Invitation or no invitation, the Insider, still frightened by Facebook, is gloomy about Google+.
Posted
07-25-2011 7:25 PM
by
The Insider