Hacker News Reader

Comment by fragsworth | Hacker News Reader

I'm kind of disappointed in their handling of it. I personally would like Google+ to succeed and at first glance it seems the real-name policy is not good for publicity, and subsequently not good for Google+'s growth.

The majority of people will use their real names anyway so I can't imagine why forcing it on everyone would help much of anything.

Can someone help me understand their rationale?

View on HN

"Can someone help me understand their rationale?"

Google is ultimately trying to turn the web into their own app store so that anyone who wants to create, view, monetize, or share content has to do it using their proprietary services.

Do you honestly believe that?

Yes of course. Google sees themselves as being in the utility business, like the digital equivalent of an electric or water company. The whole company is basically a series of strategically placed loosely connected platforms that work in the background like infrastructure. Right now the Internet is still very young so they are essentially just building their moyo[1], expect the pieces to become more closely interconnected over the next ten years.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moyo_(Go)#Moyo+.28.E6.A8.A1.E6....

That's been the aim of virtually every large Technology presence for the past decade or more.

Microsoft spent a decade chasing the dream of taking a "vig" on every electronic transaction. At one time, Visa's CEO listed among its three largest competitive threats MasterCard, AmEx, and Microsoft (I guess it doesn't pay to Discover...).

Amazon and eBay are doing well on the same basis. Apple has its iTunes store. Google sits on the nexus with search, advertising, and a huge social / demographics database. Being able to siphon a few cents off of every online transaction, plus advertising, would be a tremendous market.

And having saturated the search and advertising markets, it's not as if Google has much growth through its traditional core functions.

Perhaps their rationale has something to do with a bigger plan of correlating G+ info with names of people they find online.

Exactly if you know who authored a peice of content then you can get a pretty good idea of how authoritative it may be. Google is pretty good about finding content but you want to know that the content is actually good (no content farms) if you know who wrote it then you can get a pretty good idea of how authoritative it may be.

This goes into some more detail about this: http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/google-plus-identity-and-seo

Facebook does suspend users for using their real name in the past. But how come it's not as known? Because they started pretty small by having a social website for Harvard, so early tech people who got suspended were quickly re-instated because they could go over and talk to Mark. Then Ivy League universities, just send Facebook an email. Then all universities, getting harder to help. Then everyone, replace support with a FAQ(?) that's quickly becoming out of date.

Early tech users of Google+ who get suspended, and have no support. What are they most likely to do; complain to other users who listen to early tech users.

Google+ is overall; a very bad execution that could do with a different strategy next time. In the meantime, Facebook is excited to adopt G+ features until G+ is aborted. Validated features are very awesome compared to untested ones.

The policy is temporary. They will roll out support for brand names and other potentially trademark-infringing names eventually. Just for the field trial, they want to make sure that everyone is using their real names because it's less hassle.

To downvoters: straight from the horse's mouth https://plus.google.com/u/0/110295984969329522620/posts/ExKJ... and http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2391461,00.asp and https://plus.google.com/105923173045049725307/posts/E3mVj6ns...

Here is their rational:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5sRC67s9fg#t=26m25s

just like they would release the source for gingerbread "when it was ready" ? Not everyone is ready to take Google's word on things when they are clearly moving in the opposite direction.

You mean Honeycomb? Gingerbread source has been released.

Also, I'm pretty sure I heard that Honeycomb will be released with the release of ICS, so I think it's hard to say we shouldn't trust them. Sure, they should've released it like the other versions, but I can't say I care that deeply.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com