I think Google cares about privacy in the abstract, but I'm concerned that there are some fundamental mismatches between what Google considers acceptable disclo

I think Google cares about privacy in the abstract, but I'm concerned that there are some fundamental mismatches between what Google considers acceptable disclosure and what I consider acceptable disclosure. I don't really understand why a "real enough" name like John Smith or something would be consistent with what they said again and again was the goal of the "real names" policy, which was that they wanted you to have a reputation to maintain so people wouldn't "act out" online. What you're saying is that they just wanted you to have western-style names, and that's all that matters? In any case, Google Plus perfectly shows what I'm talking about, because it has had serious mission creep since the beginning. If they want to have some community where everyone is forced to use their real names, fine, I'll never join that community because it's not something that interests me. What happened then was that they became downright aggressive in trying to get people to join Google Plus by making it part of the "unified" platform with "one sign in" (and no control over what you're signed in to, mind you). Now your android reviews are all on your Google Plus account, so if you want to review an app you downloaded, you have to join their forced little "community". It's heartening that after Google Buzz they've mostly been preserving some forward secrecy (i.e. "from now on all your comments will be with your real name, stop commenting if you don't like it"), but it's clear that they're deliberately making these "tradeoffs" for you, and they clearly just don't have a corporate mindset that cares about what many people care about, so I'm deeply concerned that they'll make some serious mistakes in the future just because they don't understand what people outside their culture care about, and they don't mind taking unilateral action.