SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the arrows-buy-ennui-utter-gnome-our-crust-as-wheat dept.
According to the Google+ Page, Google is finally giving up on forcing everyone to user their real names to join Google+.
When we launched Google+ over three years ago, we had a lot of restrictions on what name you could use on your profile. This helped create a community made up of real people, but it also excluded a number of people who wanted to be part of it without using their real names.
Over the years, as Google+ grew and its community became established, we steadily opened up this policy, from allowing +Page owners to use any name of their choosing to letting YouTube users bring their usernames into Google+. Today, we are taking the last step: there are no more restrictions on what name you can use.
We know you've been calling for this change for a while. We know that our names policy has been unclear, and this has led to some unnecessarily difficult experiences for some of our users. For this we apologize, and we hope that today's change is a step toward making Google+ the welcoming and inclusive place that we want it to be. Thank you for expressing your opinions so passionately, and thanks for continuing to make Google+ the thoughtful community that it is.
I know many folks that refused to join Plus, just because of the restrictions and the fact that they *cough* suggest you to anyone in your contacts. They've given up on youtube comments, app store ratings, and a dozen other things that require Plus accounts.
Some might now join, though most probably won't simply because Google was so darn stubborn about this for so darn long.
What say the Soylentils?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by geb on Wednesday July 16 2014, @03:24PM
Yep.
I've gone without a G+ account for this long, so I can continue without it quite happily. I might join if shown some compelling reason to do so, but there isn't any "Ooh! New! Shiny!" excitement left.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday July 16 2014, @04:24PM
Awhile ago Google tried to shoehorn some of the social G+ features into Gmail, as I discovered when I logged in.
They also politely provided me an opportunity to let them know what I thought about the new "features," and I wrote for them to "Fuck off with that shit or users will flee your services in droves, and are already because you're Stasi NSA collaborators."
Then I wrote that, "You try to pull this shit on me one more time, and I will quit all Google services for good."
But who knows whether or not this capitulation mentioned in the article is related to bad press about their NSA collaboration, or their attempt to push users into G+, or both?
(Score: 1) by Arik on Wednesday July 16 2014, @08:24PM
At this point, there's just no way.
And no, I dont use FB either. This isnt FB > Google they both get the same treatment. Null route them and find replacements for sites that rely on their XSS pollution.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?