Schmidt: G+ 'Identity Service,' Not Social Network 417
David Gerard writes "Eric Schmidt has revealed that Google+ is an identity service, and the 'social network' bit is just bait. Schmidt says 'G+ is completely optional,' not mentioning that Google has admitted that deleting a G+ account will seriously downgrade your other Google services. As others have noted, Somewhere, there are two kids in a garage building a company whose motto will be 'Don't be Google.'"
Those Kids in the Garage (Score:4, Insightful)
will be sued the second they stick their heads out cause someone holds a patent of a fucking text entry box
Don't Be Evil? That's just a lie (Score:5, Insightful)
On one hand, I cannot believe Google is doing this.
On the other hand, I cannot believe I fell for Google's "Don't Be Evil". While I used to wish for Google Wallet to come out and take over from Evil Paypal, at least, with Paypal, you know what they are doing. Always doing everything they can screw you over.
Google promises you with sweetness and honey... and then betrays you, which is even worse.
And for everyone who says you don't have to use G+ - it is *NOT* G+, it is Google Profile that is the problem, G+ is a component of Google Profile. If your Google Profile is disabled, a shit load of other services are impacted. Yeah, don't use Google. Sure.
Looking for alternatives now.
Re:Don't Be Evil? That's just a lie (Score:5, Insightful)
You mad about your free optional services bro?
I use google for email, maps, and homepage for RSS feeds.
Any of those are taken away, I can find alternatives very easily.
Seriously! (Score:5, Insightful)
This summary couldn't have been more obviously anti-Google biased if it tried. It's utterly tedious trying to stay informed about geek news while being bombarded with such overwhelming biases. Its annoying in the comments section, but that's where I expect to see it.
I know, I know. I must be new here...
Re:Don't Be Evil? That's just a lie (Score:3, Insightful)
If you used Gmail as your primary mailbox/frontend then it's quite painful. Yeah, it was free, but it's self defeating to punish people for trying out G+. I didn't for exactly this reason: I don't want to play with fire.
Re:Slanted Summary (Big Surprise) (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh. Is 'dringess' your real name, then? Or how exactly does this compare?
alternatives? (Score:5, Insightful)
Every time a post about G+ or Facebook pops up I am reminded of the good old days of IRC when you could socialize with your friends without going through an evil multinational corporation.
I can't even count the number of friends that I don't talk to anymore only because they abandoned IRC, or even real life get-togethers, for Facebook (and G+).
Re:Don't Be Evil? That's just a lie (Score:2, Insightful)
In capitalism and fascism, the powerful betrays the consumers/subjects. And exploits them.
They only bullshitted you, when they, between the lines, said something like: you have a choice.
It reminds me of a George Carlin bit called, you have no rights, you have owners.
For the american audience:
No, I'm not a commie.
Re:There it is (Score:5, Insightful)
Straight from the horse's mouth:
You are the product, not the consumer.
No. Your HABITS are the product. Google is a marketing machine and they sell insight into current, past and future trends in various groups, and for that they need to follow people's habits. That insight is their product. Google however does not sell people; you cannot buy information on any specific person from Google.
Besides, how is this news? Wasn't it obvious already from before? Did you think Google has trees that sprout cash every spring so they can keep on offering completely free services to people without Google going bankrupt? ALL similar free services monitor their users for anything relevant and share portions of that data forth, Google is in no way an exception or "the one, evil megacorporation out there to suck out your soul" or anything like that.
As long as Google doesn't sell specific people out and anonymize their data I personally couldn't care less, I'm getting hugely useful services without losing anything and I'm going to continue using them.
Re:Don't Be Evil? That's just a lie (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not free. It is costing you your privacy. Apparently that is not worth anything to many people.
Privacy is the last freedom we have and we are handing it over as if it was never ours to have.
Re:There it is (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean straight from the paraphrasing without any verifiable transcript's mouth.
So just don't do it (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly right.
Google may have started as a couple of college students creating a search engine and Facebook may have started as a couple of college students creating a social networking web site. But those days a long gone. Google and Facebook are not in the search or social networking business, they are in the ADVERTISING business. Their business model is now one thing and one thing only: collecting as much personal information about you as they can so they can sell it to advertisers.
If you really seriously have a problem with this, then DON'T FUCKING USE THEM. Seriously, how hard is that to figure out.
Re:Don't Be Evil? That's just a lie (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have an emotional attachment to a free online service offered by an advertising agency you have some real problems.
Re:Sounds like a load of Web 2.0 bullshit to me. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's worse. http://botgirl.blogspot.com/2011/08/cnn-interview-reveals-more-from-eric.html [blogspot.com] had the perfect first post.
Google is building the Microsoft Passport. I DON'T WANT THAT SHIT.
Re:Don't Be Evil? That's just a lie (Score:5, Insightful)
How long before this optional service starts to affect your normal browsing? Want Youtube? Gotta tie it to your Google account. Fine, have a fake one. But all of a sudden, you're required to use your real info. So now you can't access significant portions of the web without being under their umbrella.
If google gets big enough, once it pushes all the alternatives out of the market, or once the alternatives become somewhat irrelevant as to force you into google to be part of the internet "life", then it might become a case for the FTC, or equivalent government entity.
Re:Did we even need more proof? (Score:2, Insightful)
They made the choice when they committed the crime that put them in prison.
So did the prisoners in the gulags.
Of course their crime was probably saying 'You know, some days I wonder whether Comrade Stalin is really quite as nice as everyone says he is'.
Re:Seriously! (Score:3, Insightful)
Right, because Slashdot hasn't been vehemently pro-Google nearly all the time for the last ten years. I'm curious if you wave your finger at story submissions that are biased against Microsoft or Apple, because there sure are a hell of a lot of those that get posted.
I think the community can handle some needed Google criticism to keep things fair.
Re:Did we even need more proof? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if their "actual money" comes from us (which is pure bullshit), their "actual wealth" comes from their labor. China still understands something that the US has forgotten: that labor always precedes capital, not the other way around. A stick lying on the ground isn't worth nearly as much as that stick carved into a beautiful cane.
The world doesn't need all that many software engineers or investment bankers. By blindly and foolishly destroying our labor-based economy, crushing unions, putting supply over demand, we've given away our seed corn and have thrown our national wealth away. Almost every one of you who are pre-retirement are losing ground, but you're too proud and too scared to admit it.
And the one hope that the US has of trying to turn it around is going to be discarded thanks to the sudden concern about deficits. Government austerity here in the US is going to work about as well here in the US as it has in Europe. It is impossible to turn around a downward trend by "shrinking government".
You have obviously not been to China in the past decade, nor have you ever spoken to a Chinese businessman.
Do you know that the same thing was said about the public works projects of the New Deal? They turned out to herald the greatest period of widespread growth and prosperity in US history. Here in the US, we're destroying our own prosperity and economic well-being for the benefit of a few powerful corporate groups. China is not only going to pass the US by economically, but in 25 years it will be superior socially and culturally too. But only if they can resist the pressure from the same corporate oligarchs that have just about finished destroying America.
Re:Sounds like a load of Web 2.0 bullshit to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
There seems to be a concerted effort to spew paranoia about Google lately. I recently listened to an interview with Scott Cleland about his book: 'Why You Can't Trust Google'. The whole thing reeked of a hit job. Mostly just imagining the worst possible implications of every 'questionable' thing Google does. But some out and out conspiracy theorizing too.
He describes how Google has 'copies of the entire web' as if there's any other way to provide the kind of search they provide. And somehow Bing (which, after all, is a direct clone of Google's business model) doesn't have such copies, or somehow has more benign plans for them.
He ranted on about how Android tracks your location. At least in this case, a caller noted that that's optional, but in any case, what about the iPhone?
He painted the 'wifi monitoring' scandal as if it were intended for sniffing your dirty laundry instead of to log wifi locations (as others have done) in order to build a triangulation system to augment GPS location.
Hell, there are folks right here ranting that Google's evil because they don't give away their core software - only millions of lines of other very useful stuff, but hey, evil is evil. And that kind of rant is nuts.
Make no mistake, Google's got lots of info. And they use it to sell targeted advertising. But, so far at least, they're not selling your identity to anyone (I'm not even sure they have your identity if all you use them for is search. And if they are building an identity service, there's still no indication that they plan to put it to evil purposes. I believe they're pretty clear about what they will and will not do with the info they have. But if they decided to go all evil one day, I guess that could be a problem. And never underestimate the potential for incompetence in maintaining all that info securely. So, start lobbying your govt stooges to get some privacy legislation. Still, no reason to act as if everything Google does has nefarious motives. More and more, I'm inclined to assign those motives to whoever is funding these backdoor attacks.
Re:Don't Be Evil? That's just a lie (Score:3, Insightful)
Altavista didn't suck, newfag.