I'm rather disturbed by these troubling trends that Google has taken. I'm not interested in G+ nor do I want to be involved in the battle between Google and Facebook for the greater number of users. I enjoy using some of their services but it's getting to the point where I'd rather pay for email and look for an alternative RSS solution.
At some point Google is going to be investigated for this. Like MS, they'll probably get away with this in the US because Google is US based and they let businesses get away with anything, but the EU will hammer them.
One element I find disturbing is that since our work email migrated to Google Apps and because G+ accounts are enabled by default when you happen to be logged in to the browser and visit G+, people I don't know or care about are adding me to their G+ circles. While I ignore these, it does concern me that if I click on the wrong button and add someone, suddenly I have established a relationship with, say, a client that can't be revoked easily.
I click on the wrong button and add someone, suddenly I have established a relationship with, say, a client that can't be revoked easily.
Even if you were forced to use Google+, un-circling someone doesn't generate a notification, so there's no reason to worry about creating a relationship you can't revoke.
But they can see that you are not following them, right? I can see everyone who has me in their circles (following). So therefore I can see who has removed me, even if no notification is given.
Yes, that's true. I suppose you could always just move them to a circle that you never share with. But I agree that, if this is really a problem, it's best not to have a Google+ account at all. (You've got to admit, though, this is a pretty contrived scenario. Someone that runs their own web server can also tell that you've never visited their site, for example.)
You can hide whether the list of people who you are following shows up on your profile. You can't, AFAIK, hide the fact that you are following someone from the person themselves.
In other words, if you have person B in your circles, you can hide whether person C (or the general public) can find out that person B is in your circles. You can't prevent person B from knowing that they are in your circles (thought they won't know which circles they are in).
I'm pretty sure this is the model. I can confirm it if you'd like.
I'm not sure. I enabled G+ to manage our business page, which made my account visible. The couple of people who found it added my personal account from knowing my email. I circled them mistakenly (a slip of the mouse is all that's needed) and then uncircled them. They get a notification that I am, indeed, on G+ and am now ignoring them.
Knowing this beforehand I would have made a new email address to manage the account, and could freely allow circling. I guess I'll go find out now if I can change the owner of the page.
Same with a free Google Apps account -- the domain administrator has to explicitly enable Google+ for your domain, along with a bunch of other dependent services like Picasa, and sees a bunch of warnings in the process. And then, every user has to opt-in. I just tried it yesterday.
If you look at it, Facebook is doing the same thing. Facebook has email & you need to set up a social network account.
Google is turning into a social company and so it needs their users to set up a social network profile.
You can easily choose another email service if you don't like it. This only applies to new users so there's really no lock-in since none of your data are at Google yet.
It is definitely troubling to think about this in the long run and how this entangles into search/email and privacy concerns...
And honestly I don't think the G+ users will want their Facebook friends to be on G+, same way that most users on Youtube have separate accounts from their Google/Gmail account. From the looks of this, G+ will just push away users from other Google services, and causing confusion.
I've been seeing Google differently since G+. Google, the global CDN and distributed computer, is a platform now. G+ is the frontend they're building on top of Google to bring all their Google-based services together.
Obviously they're getting people to commit to their social identities on G+ so they can meet their stated goal of becoming an identity provider.
The war is on between Twitter, Facebook, and Google and it has nothing to do with the number of messages or advertisements that can be served. It's the number of end user identities that can be authenticated.
Are you disturbed my Microsoft completely dominating the desktop? 90% market share for a decade and a half. Microsoft essentially beat the US govt. Nothing significant happened. By the time restrictions were imposed, the competition was dead.
In Google's case, it's highly doubtful that they will ever dominate social. The barriers to entry for the online world are way too low.
>Are you disturbed my Microsoft completely dominating the desktop? 90% market share for a decade and a half.
Yes, I was but I don't blame MS for that. There were no competent alternatives during the mid 90s. Apple was on the verge of going out of business and Linux wasn't ready for the average user yet. I don't blame Google either for dominating search. They (MS & Google) are or were the best at what they do. The problem arises when companies leverage a monopoly to enter another business.
>In Google's case, it's highly doubtful that they will ever dominate social.
With this news it is far more likely that they will (when this is about the number of users) if a user's only intent is to create a YouTube or Gmail account and have to accept all three.
BeOS could have been an alternative in the middle to late 90's.
If only Microsoft hadn't utterly kill it by threatening hardwave vendors who considered offering it with cancelling their OEM agreements.
And lo and behold, Apple came along and completely out-innovated MS and is utterly kicking their ass on all fronts. No government intervention required.
Maybe it was a bit of exaggeration, but I think maybe you don't realize how much things have changed. In the late 90's it was difficult to avoid using a Microsoft OS. First, the commercial operating systems available were mostly niche products with relatively little software available. What was available was not compatible with what most of the world was using.
Linux was gaining popularity, but it was difficult to install and use. It lacked the quality desktop apps that are available today. It lacked a coherent and usable desktop. I think it was around 1998 or '99 that I installed RedHat 5.2. It came with fvmw2 or something. It was hideous, and that was only after I spent hours trying to configure X in the first place. There was no free MS Office-compatible word processor. StarOffice came out around then, but it was commercial and pretty lousy. It was years later that there was decent office software that was compatible with the rest of the world. Netscape 4 was pretty much the only game in town for web browsing. Fonts looked like total crap. Oh, and that's if you could even get your modem to work in the first place. Winmodems were everywhere. I went out and bought an external 56k modem for like $75 and spent weeks getting it to work. I could go on, but I really don't like thinking about the bad old days.
Basically, you were stuck with Microsoft back then. They may have only lost %5 market share or some small number, but there are very good alternatives available. Market share hardly matters at this point for end users. Whether you choose MS, Mac or Linux you can expect wide support.
It's a very different landscape for end users, as well as Microsoft.
Looking at it from a non-MS fanboy perspective. Apple has repeatedly out-flanked MS, reinvented a couple of major industries and has hugely successful product lines beyond desktop PC software, so yes, Apple has been kicking MS's arse for quite a while now.
How is it you figure that this warrants any sort of investigation exactly? I don't see any other issues with this neither: it applies for new signups, existing users aren't required to open G+ account or anything else.
It's funny how people keep getting "shocked and surprised" by obvious moves, what use is it having a profile or a cohesive identity system for all your services if you don't incorporate it into said services or even use it when users sign up?!
Eventually Google will rollover their existing users and force them to signup for Google Plus. They are already guilty of this strategy when they forced Gmail users to link their youtube accounts.
And because of the danger this poses to your other Google services (get kicked off of Google+, lose them too) that'll be the day I move my Google Docs back to my own systems (they are mostly there because that was the best solution immediately after my apartment was trashed by the Joplin, MO tornado and I'm trying to go Microsoft free) and delete my Google account, assuming that doesn't trash my Google Group subscriptions (which go to my own email address serviced by Fastmail anyway).
lets be clear though... we are talking about google's users, its product, not its payingclients, right?
people who are using spmething for free dont have much to complain about from a legal standpoint...... thoug fair enough to ket google know when they have gone too far and migrate elsewhere. google needs users to deliver to its clients..........
At some point Google is going to be investigated for this. Like MS, they'll probably get away with this in the US because Google is US based and they let businesses get away with anything, but the EU will hammer them.