“From 31 July, people who have created private profiles in, say, the ad broker's free email service Gmail will be deleted by Google unless individuals switch it to public view.
"The purpose of Google Profiles is to enable you to manage your online identity. Today, nearly all Google Profiles are public. We believe that using Google Profiles to help people find and connect with you online is how the product is best used. Private profiles don't allow this, so we have decided to require all profiles to be public," said the company.
Google said that it would only require a user's full name and gender to be displayed on the public profile. Any other information an individual doesn't want to reveal to the world can be edited or deleted.
"If you currently have a private profile but you do not wish to make your profile public, you can delete your profile. Or, you can simply do nothing. All private profiles will be deleted after July 31, 2011," said Google.
The move is part of Mountain View's wider ambition to bake social products into its search and email products.
As a result, anyone planning to use Google+ will need a public profile with, at minimum, their full name and gender displayed.” {The Register 7th July 2011}
1 comment:
This 'public profile' is an additional bit of stuff that is added to your account at your own choice. It's separate from the accounts or other service profiles like blogger or google code.
I've never had one, and it doesn't seem to have much purpose.
Seems to be that they want to use it as the root profile for g+ instead now. And having a private profile for that defeats the purpose.
At least they're not asking for scans of passports of licenses as evidence of your 'real name'.
Still not sure about g+, I probably don't have any use for it. Any friends who are too lazy to write an email or pick up a phone aren't going to become better friends if they have an easier way to keep in touch.
(and i think google have access to enough private info already)
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