Privacy Vs. Google +

Dear Madame L,

A friend of mine has invited me to join Google + and be a pal of hers on it, but when I tried to sign up using my usual Web name --- i.e., not my real name and identifying information, which I keep private --- I couldn't do it. What's up with that?

Sincerely,

A Very Private Person


Dear Private Person,

Madame L sympathizes with you and thinks you're actually kind of lucky that you weren't able to do that. Madame L, even though she uses a Google platform for this Q-and-A blog, trusts the people at Google as far as she can throw their Bay Area campus into the Bay.

Because you asked, though, Madame L did a little online research, AKA GOOGLING, to see what she could find out about Google +.

What she found astounded her and will astound you, too. Please read this article, "Thanks for nothing, jerkface!" 

You may, if you are as disillusioned as Madame L has been about Google in general and Google + in particular, be interested especially in this excerpt:

Google Search is no longer the clean, high-performance tool we once relied on and admired — now it's a fetid stew of Google+-littered, screwed up mystery-mechanics, running under the misguided assumption that anyone and everyone only wants more of their own location, their connections, Google's clumsily guessed interests, and Google+ favoritism in the results served back to them.

Now we're filled with a sense of dread with every Google change, every Google product release reminding us that we're being tracked and recorded, and we're held captive by "one account, all of Google" — all with Google+ at its infected core.

Madame L continues to push back against Google's attempts to get her to be part of "one account, all of Google," and hopes you will, too.

Sincerely,

Madame L