Why Google cares if you use your real name
There’s a very simple business reason why Google cares if they have your real name. It means it’s possible to cross-relate your account with your buying behavior with their partners, who might be banks, retailers, supermarkets, hospitals, airlines. To connect with your use of cell phones that might be running their mobile operating system. To provide identity in a commerce-ready way. And to give them information about what you do on the Internet, without obfuscation of pseudonyms.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've been a daily internet user since 1997. Since then, I've used many screen names, but for about the last 10 years or so, I've used "TravelingBiker" as my screen name everywhere on the internet where I have an account that's not related to my business. There is no way in hell I would put my real name on the internet. Hello!!?? Have you never heard of identity theft?? All someone needs is your real name (or a close variation of it, like if your name is Richard, Dick will work, or Michael/Mike) and your birth date to run up a bunch of debt in your name and my your life a living hell. NOTHANKYOUVERYMUCH.
Although I started as a fan of Yahoo, when Google Search debuted, I was an eager convert. When they created GMail, I became a huge Google fan. Picass, Blogger, Google Reader, I use it all! Although I didn't like Google Buzz, I've been hoping Google would create an alternative to facebook. I really hate facebook. When I got my invite to Google Plus, I was a very happy guy, glad to add one more Google property to my list of favorite internet places. I like Google so much, that as soon as I could I ditched the Blackberry phone I've depended on for almost 10 years in favor of an Android phone (another Google product). I've been planning on moving my hosted internet exhange to google apps in the near future and building out a full website and using some of the other google apps service.
Now I'm not naive. I know Google doesn't provide us all of the awesome free services for free (or in the case of google apps, cheap)... They earn money by selling advertising, and by selling information about us... Everyone who knows anything knows that. And I don't mind if they sell someone information about me, as long as I'm a nameless nobody that they can't be personally and specifically connected to that information.
About a week ago Google decided they didn't like my name and/or my photo, and they suspended my google plus account. {insert sad face here}
so I changed my screen name to something I thought might appease them, and they approved it, but after reading the latest news about google and their name debacle, I'm not sure how long my new screen name will last before my account is suspended again.
NOTE TO GOOGLE: If you think I'm going to allow you to have/use/sell my real identity, you've got to be out of your freakin mind!!!
If Google really wants me to go back to using Yahoo mail, Yahoo Calendar, Wordpress, flikr, etc, and stop my preperations to roll out my business suite on Google Apps, I will. I know they don't care about losing little ole me... But it doesn't have to be just little ole me....
WHO'S WITH ME???
Will you tolerate this? Will you continue to enable Google to require us to make ourselves vulnerable to identity theft, and worse by using our real name on Google properties? Or will you take a stand with me and force Google to realize that there is a line they can't cross with us, and if they do, it will cost their business plan more than they stand to gain by continuing on this path they're on.
It's time to stop being sheep and stop allowing huge companies to think they can bully us and that we'll put up with it like idiots.
Will you draw a line in the sand and send Google a warning not to cross it? Together we can send them a very loud message!
BTW - Tech Crunch has proposed a solution that I think may be a tolerable compromise. Lets see if Google listens or not.
http://goo.gl/wc18O
I feel similarly to you. I don’t want Google knowing too much about me, although I have used my real name—I gave it to the bastards when Google hadn’t become the mess it is now. And, thanks to acquisitions, it got a bit more data about me. But I’ve deleted what I could and my profile picture is a white box, and has been for some time.
ReplyDeleteOver the last two years, I’ve had to fight six months to get a friend’s blog restored, and exposed Google for monitoring people despite them opting out of Ads Preferences Manager. I’ve been deleting a Buzz follower nearly every day since February—BTW, I don’t use Buzz or Gmail, nor did I have a public profile till this month; I have 18 pre-blocked people in Plus and have no idea how they got there; and, right now, I’ve been pushing Google to reveal just why it has held on to my blog data against its own T&Cs, and getting conflicting answers from two different staff members. Adsense continues to hold on to my private information despite my cancelling my account there over two years ago, also against its terms and conditions.
Google’s policy: we have terms and conditions, but that’s just for show. We do what we want, and we’ll bully you for not following our “rules” when we feel like it. Facebook may be crap in the way a lot of us are treated, but at least it doesn’t have BS slogans like ‘Don’t be evil.’
I wish you luck on your fight—Google is pissing off a lot of people right now, and, sooner or later, that’s going to reach a tipping-point.