Both the points you are making, makes Google a bad marketing/strategy firm but not evil: the sentiment I was replying to. And this is being done after they have

Both the points you are making, makes Google a bad marketing/strategy firm but not evil: the sentiment I was replying to. And this is being done after they have agreed to provide support for pseudonyms! It may not be their first priority - or may require significant changes in the way data is being handled to allow for security of the real identity. But the OP assumed that this is because of a conspiracy between the firm, ISPs and Government, and that the company is not to be trusted. I fail to understand how does this results in the conclusion that the company is not trustworthy or moral. It can be derived that company is rigid, slow, lazy and even a poor investment. Failing to provide a feature(and yes it's a feature not a right - the service is no way mandatory) that might affect a significant (in terms of their reach and not numbers) consumer base makes them a bad service provider - not evil genius. Additionally, this is not the worst of both worlds. Worst of both worlds would be to selectively allow pseudonyms to some and while others have to use real identity. That not only makes the service partial, but skewed towards anarchy (using it for the lack of a replacement). Given a choice between pseudonyms and real identities - the choice is based majorly on the type of culture the networks supports. For example: I tend to use the same username nearly everywhere - unfortunately I can't comment on youtube; the culture is very troll-y and I would not like to be associated at all. On the other hand, Buzz was quite successful in my university - majorly because it was associated with sort-of-a-real identity (Everyone was using clean & real names) which resulted in much saner, smarter interaction that was fun to be a part of. Facebook seems to have achieved the same though real sounding names which is the reason many blogs use their comment system. [edit: typos]