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posted by martyb on Wednesday July 16 2014, @03:16PM   Printer-friendly
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?

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Friday July 18 2014, @08:42AM

    by Aiwendil (531) on Friday July 18 2014, @08:42AM (#70685) Journal

    Not that I'm going to sign up; but now their policies allow me to actually use the names people know me by.
    Yes, more people know me by this handle than my real name (heck, more people even know me by my standard aliases than by my real name) and that includes the people I meet and know irl.

    I never really got the idea of having to use real names as I see a much greater value in using the name that the most people know you by.

    (To take an example from the world of music; people would be more likely to search for "Ozzy Osbourne" than for - the up until recently required - "John Osbourne")

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