After all this time, I still do not understand - can somebody explain? What if your name is Jim Smith? Are you forced to use jimsmith37265? And what if you say your name is Professor Bebe Helicopter? Do they actually send a team to search for the real, long-form birth certificate?
I am thinking that the phone number is a more direct match to NSA files anywho, if the the email address is in question that is. My gmail acct predates the phone number requirement I am glad to say. Although I get nagged for one at login.
I think the damage to the brand is already done. I know I’m not going to forget all the times YouTube started asking me for my real name over and over and over again after Google borged it.
meh. i’ve had three different accounts since launch. i mean, this will maybe get the haters like corey to try it, but G+ has been great for me all along. welcome, everyone, no matter what you want to call yourself!
I’ll be honest, I’m still not seeing the appeal for signing up for an “identity service”, which is what G+ has always been advertised as.
I’ve been pushed by them to use it over and over again for years (and I’m sure I have at least three accounts, since it loves to helpfully make them for you with no option to not do so), but I still don’t see a single reason why I would want to use it. I actually even seriously tried at one point to give it a go and I just don’t… get the point? Aside from providing Google with data to sell, I don’t have any idea what the service is supposed to actually do for me. There is no aspect of my life that would benefit from doing anything on Google+, best as I’ve ever been able to figure out.
And they’ve been so insistent anyway that I think I’ll probably be a “hater” forever. Maybe they should have tried convincing me to use or even explaining to me why I would want to instead of forcing me to (and then kicking me off for my real name not being real enough). The bad taste in my mouth isn’t going away any time soon, that’s for sure.
Nicely done! It probably won’t save them, though. But nicely done.
They still require a Google+ account to comment on Youtube. It can be a different name, but it’s still linked to to your real name. I just quit commenting, even on videos that don’t attract trolls.
I expect at this point Google probably feels like it has a good-enough handle even on users who don’t use their real names. If Google knows who 99% of aliased users really are, that’s probably good enough.
Wishy-washy policy making is still wishy-washy. Google could and prolly will turn this decision over after an influx of new users.
I don’t even use google to search for things anymore.
Oddly, I was a beta user of Plus, and never had a problem.
Signed,
King Snorty McDribblenuts
No, it isn’t.
Signed,
King Snorty McDribblenuts
What happens when Google finally takes over the rest of the US government and they force everyone to legally change their name to their Google+ monikers, King Snorty McDribblenuts?
There are videos on YouTube that don’t attract trollies?
Yeah, now that you already killed all the momentum and nobody cares any more. Nicely done, guys. Your complete lack of understanding of hu-man e-mo-tion from your aspie ivory tower where you thought forcing your users to comply with your bullshit theories of hu-man be-ha-vi-or would improve youtube comments is just breathtaking.
The stupidest part is that all the trolls and other bad actors just created multiple fake accounts and happily posted away. It was the people they actually wanted on the service who were legitimately afraid of losing access to their Google account (there goes your gmail and android!) and just bailed out instead.
And now they can’t be bothered to come back.
(Yeah, I know it has a few active legit communities, like photography - which they’ve talked about spinning off).
Well, I’ll have a MUCH funner passport than Kanye.
I am OK with this.
I wonder how that’s working out for Vivek Gundrota?
Hello,
I suspect this move is more based on Facebook’s continued growth than anything else.
Whomever manages Google+ is probably trying to increase signups and repeat usage of the service.
It’s nice that Google has finally instituted this policy, but my friends and I have long since tacitly decided on the policy of not using G+ for anything anyway.
The “real name” policy was just the shiny cherry on top of the whole G+ implementation. And, even with this welcome capitulation, you still can’t do anything much in the Googleverse without a G+ account, other than retrieve mail. But, I had to create a new Gmail account for a client this week and could not, for the file of me, find a way to do so without also getting a G+ account in the process. There used to be a tiny opt-out button hidden-away in the registration, but it was nowhere to be found. So, I guess even retrieving mail now requires G+ for new Gmail accounts.
I follow a couple remarkably troll-free YouTube channels, and not being able to engage in the discussion without first creating a G+ account does the exact opposite of what I think Google’s marketing droids assume it would do…It convinces me to use YouTube less and less.
