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It should be the reverse, private should be the default, and public should be the eyebrow raising exception. How nice it is of Google to decide by fiat to impo

It should be the reverse, private should be the default, and public should be the eyebrow raising exception. How nice it is of Google to decide by fiat to impose their standard on everybody else without consultatin (I know Eric Schmidt is on record as saying that he doesn't believe in privacy, here we have a prime example). However, at least they are handling this better than the way Facebook does. If this was Facebook they would have (a) just done it without giving advance warning and (b) would have flipped everyone who was private over to public. At least Google is deleting the accounts rather than outright exposing the info.

saurik 16y ago
I think the argument here is: if you are going to have a private profile, you may as well simply not have a profile. Like, why did you spend the time to fill in a bunch of details into Google Profile just to mark it "private"?
- agentultra 16y ago
  Perhaps so you could share it explicitly with people you've vetted and trust with your information?
  - Kylekramer 16y ago
    But there is no mechanism to share it explicitly with people you vetted. This isn't Facebook, there aren't friends with various levels of permission and a public version. You could do that by just showing your screen to your vetted people, though, I suppose.
    - jamesgeck0 16y ago
      (a) There are friends with various levels of permission. Certain fields on the profile can be set to be visible only to certain groups of contacts. (b) Upon noting (a), I filled out a private profile in anticipation that Google would be rolling out further mechanisms to share private profiles with certain contact groups.
ern 16y ago
At least Google is deleting the accounts rather than outright exposing the info. As far as I can tell, they are deleting profiles, not accounts. "Deleting your public profile won't delete your Google Account." http://www.google.com/support/profiles/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=98083 http://www.google.com/support/profiles/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#...
griftah 16y ago
World would be a very sad place if everybody were afraid to do anything publicly.

saurik 16y ago

I think the argument here is: if you are going to have a private profile, you may as well simply not have a profile. Like, why did you spend the time to fill in a bunch of details into Google Profile just to mark it "private"?

agentultra 16y ago
Perhaps so you could share it explicitly with people you've vetted and trust with your information?
- Kylekramer 16y ago
  But there is no mechanism to share it explicitly with people you vetted. This isn't Facebook, there aren't friends with various levels of permission and a public version. You could do that by just showing your screen to your vetted people, though, I suppose.
  - jamesgeck0 16y ago
    (a) There are friends with various levels of permission. Certain fields on the profile can be set to be visible only to certain groups of contacts. (b) Upon noting (a), I filled out a private profile in anticipation that Google would be rolling out further mechanisms to share private profiles with certain contact groups.

ern 16y ago

At least Google is deleting the accounts rather than outright exposing the info. As far as I can tell, they are deleting profiles, not accounts. "Deleting your public profile won't delete your Google Account." http://www.google.com/support/profiles/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=98083 http://www.google.com/support/profiles/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#...

griftah 16y ago

World would be a very sad place if everybody were afraid to do anything publicly.