Slashdot Mirror
Google Begins To Merge Google+, Gmail Contacts
An anonymous reader writes "Google today announced new integration between Gmail and Google+ that sees your social connections show up in auto-complete when you're composing an email. Google says the feature is rolling out "over the next couple of days" to everyone that uses Gmail and Google+."
Spam City, here we come. Why is this opt-out instead of opt-in? Because nobody would want it.
You aren't actually forced to use G+, even if it is enabled on your account. Realistically, Google won't be able to force you to use G+ either since that would break interoperability with other email providers.
As for the privacy concerns associated with G+, they should exist whether or not these are independent services. It is the same company collecting your data after all.
Though the obvious response is, "for now."
I'm just waiting for a conclusive youtube history gets linked in to your G+ display. I'm sure that won't be any cause for embarrassment amongst professional circles.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Guess what? It's a condo. It only concerns the 12 people who live here. No one else cares about who cleans our carpets and who's complaining about the squeaking hinges on the door over at #201.
It's so stupid. I downloaded all the documents in the drive but Google doesn't handle french accents too well in file names, AND it creates a flat zip... We lost the whole tree. Oh well, I'll manually re-create it when I migrate over to Yahoo groups.
You can say what you want about Yahoo, they don't annoy you at the same level as Google.
Mostly random stuff.
You aren't actually forced to use G+
Most Slashdotters aren't actually forced to do much of anything, but that doesn't stop them from bitching about just about everything.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Just give me GMail.
Why is it so hard for Google to give me something I want and not something that I don't want?
Or is this part of Google's plans to increase their Google+ numbers by forcing everyone with GMail to become part of Google+?
Give it a break Google.
You were cool.
But now you're becoming annoying.
If G+ was market dominant, the argument could be made that by showing completions only from google services was anticompetitive.
G+ is not market dominant... even among Google employees.
This.
I have my own domain and a small rack in the basement, with mail I haven't used much in a while.. but this G+ stupidity might just roust me out of my slumber. I've stayed with Gmail out of inertia mostly; the handy features just barely outweigh the irritation. But it's really, really close. The Gmail interface changes from a year ago still suck. Badly. Google+ is an irritating solution to a problem I don't have, and becoming terribly intrusive. Youtube integration is actively conterproductive, a constant intrusion of personal browsing into potential business activity. When I log into gmail and open up a youtube tab, it constatntly pops up a link to some warplane videos I watched a year ago. So... I can't browse youtube because if I use gmail to communicate with clients for moonlighting gigs, because those who use g+ might see that and think I'm a nut? No thanks.)
Gmail is a handy web interface to email functions I had thru IMAP a decade ago, nothing more. I could easily switch back. Better yet, I could update the whole mess and run it in a couple of VMs at AWS for pennies a day.
I hesitate because Google docs is handy for helping my kids on their school reports, annotating, correcting, making suggestions as they work on it.. but really it's a nice-to-have. I would miss it, but if the price for docs is forced use of Google+, it's not worth the hassle.
I think not...(*poof*)
Use different accounts. I have several Google accounts for different purposes. All are connected to chrome where I want them to be. Nothing professional ever gets on my personal accounts, where I look at political stuff and the like that my colleagues have no business knowing. I only use my personal accounts outside work hours, or on my phone. In any case, colleagues only see what I want them to see. It takes a while to get used to (forgetting to do work-related searches in the work browser) but when you do it's really, really handy. Problem solved? Sure, they could get at my accounts if the boss really wanted to but the boss could also install a key-logger and I'm not that paranoid...
Desktop operating systems: BeOS, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD MacOS.
By your reasoning Microsoft never had a monopoly to leverage either. Take your double standard and cram it. "Monopoly" in the context of anti-trust and anti-competition laws means "dominant market position",
Microsoft had a >85% share of the desktop market, and this is a point Federal Investigators made at the time they were considering bringing charges against Microsoft. None of those competing operating systems, taken together, had anywhere near enough market share to disrupt Microsoft effectively targeting Netscape and nearly putting them out of business. The E.U. agreed with this assessment, and brought similar charges to those brought by the DOJ in the U.S..
This is a matter of historical fact and court record.
Google has a dominant market position in search, webmail and web video, Microsoft has/had a dominant position in desktop operating systems.
Apparently you don't understand what wielding monopolistic power means either, but lever let details stop you from getting your frothing at the mouth on.
Say we grant your premise for the sake of argument. What services is Google forcing you to use, in place of what other services, by leveraging their dominant position? The only thing they are doing is using G+ as the primary placeholder for their combined credentials store, and even then, unless you are creating a new YouTube account, you can choose not to attach your existing YouTube account to the G+ credential.
The only thing that they are doing, which I think is kind of piss-poor on their part, but has nothing to do with the use of monopolistic power in any way, is preventing you creating *new* separate accounts for their various services, the same way you are unable to create separate accounts for Word or Excel on the Office365 site.
From a services management perspective, maintaining multiple back end account databases is a PITA, so I can understand why they are doing this, although I really hate that they are doing the whole Facebook-like thing and insisting on "Real Identities or well known pseudonyms", and denying account creation outside those categories. I think anonymity is important, but you aren't going to resolve that particular issue by having separate accounts, since giving that up is pretty much part of their TOS agreement, just as it's becoming part of everyone else's.
on my personal accounts, where I look at political stuff and the like
I see what you did there.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Mistakenly use the wrong account ONE time and you probably won't be able to undo the mess it will cause. I didn't like it when my "smart" phone linked my contacts and social apps and I don't like the idea of G+,FB, etc doing things auto-magically for me either.
This crap is just chasing me away from Gmail and G+.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
There's plenty of things on YouTube that I would be embarassed for the world to know I saw I'm sure. Tame or not.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg