Schmidt: G+ 'Identity Service,' Not Social Network

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.'"

Comments

Re:Don't Be Evil? That's just a lie

[John Hasler]

It's really quite possible that they already know exactly who you are so they have all the info they need,

Then they would already have known that Violet Blue was really Violet Blue. This and other cases indicate that they (and Facebook) haven't the foggiest idea exactly (or even approximately) who you are. And don't care.

It's about Profiles, not +; and what a ban does

[duhorg]

Statements from Google which are on record and verifiable, versus anecdotal evidence of what happened to some undefined person. I somehow think I'm going to choose to believe Google on this one.

The current side effects of a Google Profile suspension, with confirmations by Google staff in various G+ posts, are:

• The Profile is removed from public view.
• Existing Google+, Google Buzz, and Google Reader shared items/posts are removed from view (whether they were originally public or limited).
• Access to Google+ is blocked (more correctly, limited to only viewing public posts).
• Access to Google Buzz is blocked.
• Access to Google Reader (not just its sharing features) is blocked.

...It's hard for me to find the confirmation right now, but there is _some_ effect against Picasa. I cannot remember the exact detail. I think (but cannot yet confirm) that it removes public albums from public view.

Any other side effects reported until now have been labeled bugs and were not experienced by everyone consistently. Of particular note, a Profile suspension currently does NOT (modulo reappearing bugs?):

• block access to Gmail, Google Voice, or any other top-level service;
• block or unsubscribe from Google Groups;
• force the use of Google 2-factor authentication (which would entail providing an identifiable phone number);
• prevent the use of Google Checkout (or by extension, prevent the purchase of Android apps);
• prevent the use of Android features unrelated to the three major services mentioned (+, Buzz, Reader).

So that's the state of the world today. Whether it stays that way is up to debate, and I posited that question in my post that clarified the name policies as being an artifact of Profiles (including a reference proving that users can be banned without even having access to Google+ to begin with).