I agree. Not only the real name policy but the stories about shutting down access to other Google services is pretty frightening to a nobody like me. Especially

I agree. Not only the real name policy but the stories about shutting down access to other Google services is pretty frightening to a nobody like me. Especially when Google comes out and claims that these anecdotes are not true and that the people were banned for other nebulous reasons. Well they may or may not be. Google puts a lot of faith in their machines. If there's one thing I've learned about Google: avoid doing anything that might require some sort of intervention by them to fix your account--you won't be able to contact anyone and they just don't care unless you're famous. Someone like me will just languish in the cogs. The only times they care are when someone famous/influential gets inconvenienced or the other case is when a large group of users are affected and they have to dust off the backups. Bottom line: I'm pretty sure that if something strange happened--Google will just say it's my fault. For me as one little user: not worth the risk.