Goodbye Google+

This morning, I decide to give up on Google+. I used Google Takeout (https://www.google.com/takeout) to backup my data, then I “downgraded” my account (https://plus.google.com/downgrade/) to remove my Google+ information. 

I seem to be back where I was before joining Google+.

When downgrading, Google asked me for some feedback as to why I was leaving Google+. Here is what I told them:

I disagree with your insistence on trying to determine what my name is. I know what my name is. I don’t need Google to tell me. 

If you ever support Profiles on Google Apps, I might try Google+ again on one or more of the domains that I manage, unless I have moved them elsewhere before then.

If you give up soon on your insistence on trying to oversee what I call myself, I might try Google+ again.

Until then, I’m out of here. 

By the way, this whole thing has really soured me on Google as a whole. I had been moving my various business and non-profit domains to Google Apps, under the assumption that “Google is the most stable provider out there.” After having seen the way that many of my friends were treated with access to their Google accounts unceremoniously suspended, I no longer can trust that Google will always be there for me or for my customers. 

You have lost my trust. I will be looking at alternatives to Google Apps for my domains. 

Larry Page needs to make a public apology, fire Vic, end the insanity, and maybe that will restore some of my faith in Google.

Until then, you have clearly become evil.

Google wants to tell you what is real

Many of you may be following the controversy over Google’s new Google+ service restricting what names you can use. Folks like Google VP Vic Gundotra and his long-time friend Robert Scoble are trying to claim that, in order to make this a more polite service, Google just wants people to use the name that people call them in the real world. Despite these claims, numerous people have had their Google+ accounts suspended for trying to do just that! Nobody really knows exactly what rules you have to follow to keep your account from being suspended, but it appears that using a common, two-word, United States name works pretty well, and using anything else puts you at risk.

Google calls this policy a “Real Names” policy, thereby using the word “Real” the same way that Beverages Delaware uses it in ReaLemon. In other words, something that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike what the rest of us think of as a name. Google’s policy does nothing to prevent me from calling myself “John Smith”, along with the 6,690 other people already named John Smith on Google+. Nor does it prevent me from making up a new name that looks real, like Bradley Hanford. But, it does prevent me from using a name that many of you on Tumblr, Twitter or LiveJournal would instantly recognize as me, SixDeafTaxis. Their rules do not officially allow celebrities to use their stage names, nor writers to use their pen names, but as long as those names seem normal, Google has no problem with them. But if your name seems odd? It’s account suspension for you!

In other words, Google’s current policy is a Normal Names policy, not a Real Names policy, and someone at Google (we aren’t sure who), gets to define what normal is.

I have 150 invites available, but I cannot in good conscience invite any of my friends to come join a party where the host has veto power over what you write on your name tag.