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> However, I do not want to be forced into a single, > worldwide identity. Either personally, or admixed with > various professional responsibilities and re

> However, I do not want to be forced into a single, > worldwide identity. Either personally, or admixed with > various professional responsibilities and relationships. Have you considered using the "Pages" feature? Pages allow users can create an arbitrary number of anonymous identities, and they can be used for any (legal) purpose. The only significant restriction is that a Page identity can't initiate contact with other identities, as an anti-spam mechanism. > I also don't want to feel an excessive risk of being "unplugged" from > Google's services. > [...] > For now, I think I'll use a secondary identity -- not a false one, but a > second account -- to participate in Google+. I already have one for casual > business contacts. In case the feedback is worth anything, I still fear > committing my primary Google identity to the product. While the risk of being banned from Google+ is still unfortunately real, this does not extend to other Google products. Even if your account is banned from Google+ for using a non-government identity, other products will still work fine. To my knowledge, nobody has ever lost access to GMail or YouTube just because they used their own identity.

pasbesoin 14y ago
Thank you for taking the time to read and respond. From an admittedly perhaps poorly informed outside perspective, there still seems to be fear and uncertainty (FUD?) around the deactivation of access to Google services and whether and what the side-effects may be. This may merge somewhat with some of the comments that appear regarding Adsense, et al. Different services, but the outsider observes (and perhaps incorrectly comingles) that when there is a dis-continuation, a clear description of the nature of the problem and/or any communication to resolve it, can seem nearly impossible to get. Nothing I'm sure you haven't heard/read before -- and, no, I am not qualified to speak to it with any authority, not anecdotally much less from any professional perspective. I do think there continues to be a... "missing element", from some of Google's current perspective. Or from whatever warped version of that is currently being presented in the media. Google, users, and advertisers used to be pretty much, for lack of a better perspective, "on the same page". (Yeah, that might also be a pun.) Without being able to fully evaluate why, there seems to be more arguing going on now, amongst those factions. Perhaps that is really, at core, what is going wrong. (To extent there is something wrong; I mean, Google's not exactly hurting for business.) I'll stop now. If you've read through this, I've chewed up more than enough of your time. Regards P.S. I haven't looked at Pages (I'm approaching feature overload -- taken across the Internet as a whole). I will say, to that, that sometimes the simplest approach to avoiding co-mingling is simply to establish and maintain separate entities. The old, "no one knows your are a dog" situation and approach. Some people just want to KISS. Added: Perhaps I am contradicting myself, in this last. And I've seen some of the gamesmanship that (ab)users can created out of unbridled anonymity. But, if I'm going to investing in learning and curating a complex, private-party-platform identity, I guess I need some reassurance going in that the features I need -- e.g. control of scope and identity -- are both present and inviolate. Rightly or wrongly, some of the initial controversy around Plus and identities there did some real damage to this.
- jmillikin 14y ago
  > From an admittedly perhaps poorly informed outside > perspective, there still seems to be fear and uncertainty > (FUD?) around the deactivation of access to Google > services and whether and what the side-effects may be. > [...] > Without being able to fully evaluate why, there seems to be > more arguing going on now, amongst those factions. Perhaps that > is really, at core, what is going wrong. (To extent there is > something wrong; I mean, Google's not exactly hurting for > business.) http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html I believe that the story "signing up for Google+ endangers your account" is spread online and in the media by companies (one, in particular) whose profits are endangered by Google+ . Prior to 2011, Google's core businesses were in markets with no large, unethical competitors. That's why there was never a flood of news articles about Maps, or Reader, or GMail -- the competition were basically honest, and used features or user experience to sway users. Google+ is the first attempt to take on entrenched unethical competition, and that competition's response has been to launch an astroturfed PR offensive. It doesn't matter how many of their accusations are refuted; as long as there's enough doubt to discourage users from signing up for Google+, the PR has served its job. Microsoft had a similar PR campaign in the mid-00's, to spread fear about Linux and the GPL. I still see occasional echos of this online; commentators posting long-discredited arguments about Linux being insecure, or GPL being viral, etc. I hope that the anti-Google+ campaign is less successful.

pasbesoin 14y ago

Thank you for taking the time to read and respond. From an admittedly perhaps poorly informed outside perspective, there still seems to be fear and uncertainty (FUD?) around the deactivation of access to Google services and whether and what the side-effects may be. This may merge somewhat with some of the comments that appear regarding Adsense, et al. Different services, but the outsider observes (and perhaps incorrectly comingles) that when there is a dis-continuation, a clear description of the nature of the problem and/or any communication to resolve it, can seem nearly impossible to get. Nothing I'm sure you haven't heard/read before -- and, no, I am not qualified to speak to it with any authority, not anecdotally much less from any professional perspective. I do think there continues to be a... "missing element", from some of Google's current perspective. Or from whatever warped version of that is currently being presented in the media. Google, users, and advertisers used to be pretty much, for lack of a better perspective, "on the same page". (Yeah, that might also be a pun.) Without being able to fully evaluate why, there seems to be more arguing going on now, amongst those factions. Perhaps that is really, at core, what is going wrong. (To extent there is something wrong; I mean, Google's not exactly hurting for business.) I'll stop now. If you've read through this, I've chewed up more than enough of your time. Regards P.S. I haven't looked at Pages (I'm approaching feature overload -- taken across the Internet as a whole). I will say, to that, that sometimes the simplest approach to avoiding co-mingling is simply to establish and maintain separate entities. The old, "no one knows your are a dog" situation and approach. Some people just want to KISS. Added: Perhaps I am contradicting myself, in this last. And I've seen some of the gamesmanship that (ab)users can created out of unbridled anonymity. But, if I'm going to investing in learning and curating a complex, private-party-platform identity, I guess I need some reassurance going in that the features I need -- e.g. control of scope and identity -- are both present and inviolate. Rightly or wrongly, some of the initial controversy around Plus and identities there did some real damage to this.

jmillikin 14y ago
> From an admittedly perhaps poorly informed outside > perspective, there still seems to be fear and uncertainty > (FUD?) around the deactivation of access to Google > services and whether and what the side-effects may be. > [...] > Without being able to fully evaluate why, there seems to be > more arguing going on now, amongst those factions. Perhaps that > is really, at core, what is going wrong. (To extent there is > something wrong; I mean, Google's not exactly hurting for > business.) http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html I believe that the story "signing up for Google+ endangers your account" is spread online and in the media by companies (one, in particular) whose profits are endangered by Google+ . Prior to 2011, Google's core businesses were in markets with no large, unethical competitors. That's why there was never a flood of news articles about Maps, or Reader, or GMail -- the competition were basically honest, and used features or user experience to sway users. Google+ is the first attempt to take on entrenched unethical competition, and that competition's response has been to launch an astroturfed PR offensive. It doesn't matter how many of their accusations are refuted; as long as there's enough doubt to discourage users from signing up for Google+, the PR has served its job. Microsoft had a similar PR campaign in the mid-00's, to spread fear about Linux and the GPL. I still see occasional echos of this online; commentators posting long-discredited arguments about Linux being insecure, or GPL being viral, etc. I hope that the anti-Google+ campaign is less successful.