problem is that privacy/anonymity runs counter to the core Google business with is advertising and collecting personal data. Well, that's the thing: you don't

problem is that privacy/anonymity runs counter to the core Google business with is advertising and collecting personal data. Well, that's the thing: you don't have to be anonymous to Google. Just let people create a few separate 'profiles' that they can post with (like Reddit's throwaway accounts, but integrated). In the end, this would be even better for Google; Facebook can build a profile of who you portray yourself as, but they can't get any behavioural data from other aspects of yourself that you might want to keep off Facebook to avoid attaching them to your real name. If you want an example, check out FetLife; a giant fetish/kink version of Facebook. People post updates, photos, events, etc. there that you almost definitely wouldn't post to Facebook, because you don't want your real name attached to that (because sometimes people are careless and might give away aspects of your life that you don't want revealed). Imagine if Google could make use of that information, those friends lists, those interactions, those posts and comments and connections. They would have a huge data harvesting advantage over Facebook, because they could see aspects of your life that no one else could see, as well as aspects of your life that you're open and public with. The same goes for celebrities. They could have their 'celebrity' account (i.e. their 'real' account), but also create separate personas that they could use to read, post, comment, etc. As it is, if +Vin Diesel used Google+ like a regular person, he'd get flooded with comments; as another example, Jewel Staite, who is not even super-famous, posts pretty much any tweet and gets hundreds of retweets and favourites, and dozens of worthless replies. People like that can't use social media the way everyone else does; a secondary profile feature tied to your primary account only via Google's anonymized data collection processes, would let people like that use social media normally, be marketed to, interact, and get value that they just can't get right now. There's probably lots of other examples, but those are the two extremes that came to mind.