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I used the hell out of it. Every day. And then the Real Name debacle happened. And I thought, "There's no way Google would screw this up. They'll retract an

• astrec 15y ago
  I went one step further and killed my account last week.
  • cageface 15y ago
    I went a step further still and divested myself entirely of Google services. The real name debacle made me realize just how dependent on a single company I'd become and how little recourse I might have if that company cut me off. This was particularly troubling given how Kakfaesque Google's "support" is. So now my eggs are strewn around in several independent baskets and I intend to keep it that way.
    • davidw 15y ago
      Some postings on how people distribute their eggs and into what baskets would be interesting.
      • dorian-graph 15y ago
        Yes! I've seen several times how people say that they'ev abandoned Google services and moved on.. but never to where. Like, what's an alternative to syncing your own calendar and so on.
      • granitepail 15y ago
        Seconded. I'm a bit interested in this, myself. Are there any comparable email services? Or calendar?
      • cageface 15y ago
        For email I went to fastmail.fm. Blogging I'm now doing at WordPress and also a static Jekyll blog on S3. Contacts I'm keeping in Address Book and backing up by hand. Calendar I'm just keeping on my Phone and backing up by hand. I'm still figuring out what to do with Picasa. May just go for static galleries on S3. I use NewsFire on my Macbook instead of Reader. I'm using DuckDuckGo for searching. I never really used Google Docs anyway so that was easy. I still use Chrome but I've turned off everything (I think!) that sends my data to Google. All in all this is more work than a single, centralized account but I feel better about it.
      • andrewcooke 15y ago
        well, i decided to drop gmail because of this (at first i dropped search, but nothing else was as good at the time and search is pretty much critical for my work - and i still use disconnect, ghostery and adblock plugins, so my search and browsing in general are anonymous-ish). i looked around for a different provider. the best i found was http://www.runbox.com/ http://www.runbox.com/ - it wasn't as good, but it was the closest (the main feature missing was tags; their support was very good). but in the end i ended up handling email myself (on a linux box). it's very much not the equivalent, in that i use a console client (mutt). but the part that i most needed - search - works well using mairix http://www.rpcurnow.force9.co.uk/mairix/ http://www.rpcurnow.force9.co.uk/mairix/ (very fast, flexible command line tool for searching maildirs). unfortunately this doesn't generalise well - i can't imagine most people would be as happy using command line/curses based tools or configuring their own email services.
        • sixtofour 15y ago
          Oh how I miss MH. :) I'd use it now, except I've really gotten used to html email.
      • josephb 15y ago
        Nice tip on runbox.com. I've been compiling a list of places that I could move to and use my own domain. So far I had: lavabit.com fastmail.fm zoho.com domains.live.com Might give them all a go and report back in a Jekyll created blog post on S3 :-)
      • sixtofour 15y ago
        I started a thread at the top level: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2999815 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2999815
      • sixtofour 15y ago
        Maybe you could start a spreadsheet on Google Docs. :)
  • wccrawford 15y ago
    How exactly do you do that? I don't see a way to just remove G+.
    • j_col 15y ago
      I did. You can remove your Google+ account but still keep all other services (I still use Adwords and Analytics).
      • sixtofour 15y ago
        If you're not going to completely leave, then I would recommend leaving your G+ account intact, and just don't use it anymore. Delete your posts and pictures if you like, but don't delete the account itself. I believe I recall reading Google itself saying that if you delete your G+ account, that has the same effect as if Google had suspended your account (whatever that means from day to day). So I believe, whether you self-terminate or suffer suspension) that you lose partial functionality on Picasa. You can still store photos, but anything related to sharing is dead. Don't know if that affects pictures on Blogger. For Reader, I think you can still use it, but you can't share posts. Or something.
        • j_col 15y ago
          I don't use Picasa or Reader so this was not an issue for me. Strange the way that each system seems to behave differently.
          • sixtofour 15y ago
            If you think in a level or two, it's not that strange. Although Google Plus gets the buzz, it's the Profile that's the real product; Plus is just honey for the flies. The purpose of the Profile is to connect your Real Identity with your activity, specifically your social activity, and to correlate with the activities of your network of connections. So sharing posts in Reader and pictures in Picasa are social activities, and therefore interesting to Google. As time goes on, more Google services will take on more social activity. There's Data in them thar hills! Email, by the way, is the ultimate social activity. Google knows that, because they give you 7G space just for email storage. So expect your gmail account to some day be at as much risk of loss as any other Google service, by their TOS, if you run afoul of the Real Name policy, or any other anti-social policy that they come up with. There might be a couple reasons why your Real Name connected with yours and others' activity is interesting to Google. Either they're trying to help you have a civilized conversation with known associates in the online equivalent of a fancy coat and tie required restaurant with an assortment of mysterious cutlery and gold rimmed crystal. Or they want to make ads more valuable. I think I hear Occam sharpening up his razor.
• sixtofour 15y ago
  "Say what you like about Facebook, but if they ban your account, you don't lose your email, documents, calendar, etc etc etc. You can't say that about Google." You can say that about Google if you move your services out. I did that. I saw it as a choice between Google's superior mail, calendar and docs, with risk of losing it all, against any number of good enough choices, with no Google risk at all. I used to rant and wish, along with lots of others, for tighter integration among Google services. Well, there's a dark side to that. I'm currently a fan of one egg per basket. I've left my account intact (as far as I know) for the few Google groups I've sub'ed, and in case I need to use it in the future, but I haven't logged in for weeks. I don't miss it.
  • wccrawford 15y ago
    For me, the GMail interface is just too nice. The other stuff... Meh. I can replace it with other things that are probably better. But not GMail.
  • iaskwhy 15y ago
    Changing your online life just to use Google+ is not worth it, is it?
• ericflo 15y ago
  Why does Google requiring a real name bug everyone, but not when Facebook requires it? I don't understand this outrage at all. - Eric Florenzano
  • wccrawford 15y ago
    I already said it. Because if Facebook bans me, I only lose Facebook. If G+ bans me, I lose multiple services, including 1 that is integral to my online identity.
    • ericflo 15y ago
      That seems orthogonal to me. How is putting all one's eggs in one basket related to a pedantic requirement upon registration?
      • sixtofour 15y ago
        Because using G+ at all is vaguely risky to a vague subset of your Google services. People who have followed the rules to the letter have been suspended. Sure you can appeal. Maybe most people who do so win their appeal. But there is risk.
    • tonfa 15y ago
      I thought it was clear that a G+ ban does not affect gmail/docs/calendar/etc.
      • wccrawford 15y ago
        It's far from clear. Everything I've seen says otherwise. Please provide a citation. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/google-plus-too-much-unnecessary-drama/652 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/google-plus-too-much-un...
        • libria 15y ago
          If your profile is suspended, you will not be able to make full use of Google services that require an active profile such as Google+, Buzz, Reader and Picasa. This will not prevent you from using other Google services, like Gmail. From the zdnet article, it sounds like the Gmail lockouts were unintentional. [1] http://www.google.com/support/+/bin/answer.py?answer=1228271 http://www.google.com/support/+/bin/answer.py?answer=1228271
• zmmmmm 15y ago
  I did the same thing. I can't even explain why but I lost all enthusiasm for it right at that point even though I was using my real name. The whole thing just seemed less interesting, less like a platform and more like a ploy, less new and more same-old-same-old. I think I also knew at that point that while conversation on G+ may be more civil it will be a lot less interesting. Certainly I was never going to discuss some of the more out-of-my-comfort-zone topics that I nonetheless find interesting there if I had to do it under my real name. I wasn't actively thinking this, but I just stopped checking it all of a sudden. Maybe I just got bored but I really think the real name debacle pushed it over a threshold somehow. > Say what you like about Facebook, but if they ban your account, you don't lose your email, documents, calendar, etc etc etc. You can't say that about Google. That's a little harsh. The people being banned from G+ aren't losing their whole accounts (well, not intentionally anyway). To do that you have to exhibit a level of maliciousness far beyond using a non-real name.
  • wccrawford 15y ago
    Is it harsh? I've found nothing that says you keep the rest of your account. "When you get your account suspended on Google Plus, you lose Google Reader, your Google Profile (it is deleted from Google search) and any Picasa photos and photo albums." - http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/google-plus-too-much-unnecessary-drama/652 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/google-plus-too-much-un...
    • sixtofour 15y ago
      Google's own statement on what happens is just barely vague enough that I consider it subject to change at yesterday's moment's notice.
  • michaelochurch 15y ago
    I think I also knew at that point that while conversation on G+ may be more civil it will be a lot less interesting. Real Name policies don't necessarily make discussion more civil. Less of the low-grade trolling (throwaway posts lined with racial slurs) occurs, of course, but when people have reputations to defend the flamewars that do occur get a bit nastier and last a bit longer. Arguments that people would walk away from under anonymous conditions tend to spin out of control. There's an upper bound on the ugliness of an anonymous discussion that people break through when real identities come out. Wikipedia has something like a Real Names policy: various by-laws that pertain to personal identity. This is because (a) decisions are made based on consensus rather than correctness, and "sock puppets" corrupt this process, (b) they have a hideously badly-conceived "3 revert rule" which is supposed to apply on a per-person basis (but actually means edit wars are won by the person who has taken the time to cultivate/level-grind convincing sock puppets), and (c) blocks and bans are supposed to apply to people, not accounts. What this means in practice is that an easy way to shut down an opponent is to accuse him of someone else's identity, and an easy way to grab power one hasn't earned is to cultivate sock puppets that look like other people (as pretty much all of Wikipedia's "admins" do). It's a revolting failure, and community problems are the major reason why Wikipedia is starting to decline.
• sixtofour 15y ago
  Real Name. That sounds very much like Real Player, and seems destined to share some of the stink.