Bite - possibly the worst spinners on the planet
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Google explains its real name commitment on Google+
INTERNET SEARCH FIRM Google will improve the way it lets people create profiles on its social networking service Google+ following criticism about its practices.
The firm was criticised for shutting down accounts last week, apparently at random. It explained the account closings with the excuse that it wanted a common name policy to prevent people from using nicknames.
We cannot think of a single reason why a large advertising machine would want people to expose as much personal detail as is possible on the internet, but presumably whatever Google had in mind is suddenly less important to it.
On his own Google+ account, Google+ VP Bradley Horowitz said, not unreasonably, that several of the apparent violations of the common name policy were "well intentioned" or a mistake.
"For these users our process can be frustrating and disappointing," he said. "So we're currently making a number of improvements to this process - specifically regarding how we notify these users that they're not in compliance with Google+ policies and how we communicate the remedies available to them."
The notification is important since last time many people, including William Shatner, found themselves removed from the social network without so much as a goodbye.
Google, which we imagine is used to reacting swiftly to criticism, has created a web page to explain its policies, which sounds like a very fun stage on the way to social networking, but it is sticking firmly to its real name policy.
This means that users who violate its presumably altruistic policy about real names will be sent a message asking them to change their online moniker. µ
Tags: Google
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Having paid off web-site owners (even The Inq) with the cover story of advertising, given away "free" services to the public while perfecting its techniques of spying on us, become unified with the NSA in tracking and surveilling, and in every way insinuated itself into the fabric of the web and civil society, Google has enough influence to crack down and is clearly beginning to consolidate. No more anonymity: all your identity are belong to us.
Google was never benign: no corporation is. Google is the ultimate Trojan, pretending to give services away but actually just patiently building up a public relations front to steal the last of liberty.
As people change names to silly and inappropriate ones, or just from initial naming things have a silly name. i have a friend who is of asian origin and signs papers F. Yu, which is his name.
I am confident that names like Dick Rayne etc are inappropriate, yet real. And there will be many. I am also sorry on behalf of Mr. Shatner, many of whose works I have seen and enjoyed, that he cannot participate due to being himself.
One must however note that americans, are americans. And that should be properly stated as for countries also, but quite frankly everyone knows what I mean.
Google has been on a drive to correlate the anonymous souls on the net to real people. It started with the requirement for any new Gmail account to provide a cellular phone number, continued with the "mistake" of sniffing wi-fi/email comm with their street-view cars, and proceeds strongly with other services it offers.
I would say that being a monopoly in internet searching and other on-line services, governments should start putting some limits on its behavior - unless, of course, the various spy agencies in the US are behind the drive.