Disclaimer: I work for the big G Exactly. Google needs a way to identify and canonicalize people and organizations. I think they've tried various automated and

Disclaimer: I work for the big G Exactly. Google needs a way to identify and canonicalize people and organizations. I think they've tried various automated and smart techniques to limited success, and it's much easier to say that if you create a profile so that you tell us what your identity is and what your websites are, then we can attribute your work in searches much better. You don't ever have to use G+ the web site after that. I think that there's a basic misunderstanding of what G+ is, even inside Google, and it's our fault for not making it more clear. Maybe things needed different names. Google+ is really three main things: At it's core G+ is an identity service. It knows who you are because you have a profile. Authorship requires this I guess. Then it's a sharing service. Google needed a way to enable sharing in all it's products. Finally, it's a web site with a social stream. It's possible they should have stuck with "Google Profile" for the first part, and then the author might not be so upset that Google needs some information to attribute correctly. Also, it'd be ideal if there were standards for these things. Google definitely used to go more that route, like Open Social, but those attempts failed against proprietary systems like Facebook. I think things are just moving to fast right now for the slow process of standardization to be competitive. I hope that when certain _features_ of identity, sharing, messaging, etc. standardize again, then new protocols can be standardized around those features. New XMPP extensions, or an entirely new protocol, to support the features of Hangouts would be great for example. A system for securely asserting identity and profile information (not log-ins) in the way that people use Twitter, Facebook and G+ would be wonderful too.