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Google Quietly Nixes Mandatory G+ Integration With Gmail
An anonymous reader writes Back in 2012, Google had made it mandatory for new Gmail users to simultaneously create Google+ (G+) accounts. This is no longer so. Following the departure of G+ founder Vic Gundotra in April 2014, Google has been quietly decoupling its social media site from its other services. First, YouTube was freed, then Google+ Photos. Now, anyone who wants to create a new Gmail account unencumbered with a G+ profile can also do so.
> Now, anyone who wants to create a new Gmail account unencumbered with a G+ profile can also do so.
The main value G+ gave to google was a way to unify all of their services so that they could track you across all of them.
But nowadays it is basically impossible to create a new account with any of google's services without giving up a phone number that they will use to "authenticate" you by sending a text or a robo-call with a number you have to type back into your browser.
That lets google track you by phone number because, 99% of the population can't be bothered to get a new phone number for each sign-up. So it really doesn't matter that you aren't using G+ to explicitly unify your google accounts, they've figured out how to implicitly do it. So the end result is the same for them, while you get a false sense of compartmentalizing your life.
^ Part of the problem ^
It was an annoying insert between me and the services i want to use. I want to see my pictures on PICASA, where i put them, not integrated into G+
Good-bye
ownCloud does a pretty good job of it. Granted I'm one of those fortunate United Statsians that has a 50/5 connection, but a homemade microserver combined with docker and a slew of other applications hasn't let me down yet.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
The real question, here, is whether or not I'll be able to decouple my gmail from the unused google+ profile that I had to create. I hate that I cannot have my real name on my email without having it spread all over the internet simultaneously.
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
Personally the issue wasn't that Google knew my name (I'm sure they know a lot more than that) but that they made that information available to everyone who cared to look.
That left a bad taste in my mouth and I have since refused to touch G+ because of it, even though they did back out from that particular stance quite quickly.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I have a social networking account already, thanks.
I have an email account already, thanks
I have a cloud storage account already, thanks.
I have a search engine already, thanks.
I have an instant messenger already, thanks.
When you try to do EVERYTHING, you believe that all your customers will drop everything they have years invested in and run to you. Doesn't work out that way. And if you get over-precious and try to force them to do it, well, that doesn't go down well either.
So run them as separate, independent services that I *can* join together if I want to (it's handy to be able to sign into Google Drive with my old GMail account, for example, but don't FORCE that upon me).
In the same way that if you sell me TV, phone, Internet, water, gas, electricity, burglar alarm and music lessons - and then try to "punish" me for not using one of them, or force me to use one in order to get another - chances are that I won't use any of them. Whereas if you just ran them all as separate services, I might well decide to lump in TV, phone and Internet into a single package for convenience. But you have to think about what happens when I'm perfectly happy with my Internet provider and DO NOT want to change. If your offerings are that inflexible that you won't let me use one without the others - even if the others are useless to me - then I'm likely to find yet-another-company that will do, say, my email without requiring me to sign up to their social network too.
This is exactly how I viewed things. I was one of the first GMail accounts, back when they were invite-only and nobody knew they existed. It took over from my Hotmail (primarily because my Hotmail account was trying to tie into my Windows Live account, and into my Microsoft account, etc. etc. etc.). And when G+ came along, I looked and deliberately decided against it. The more the pushed, to more I ignored.
It never got to the point where it became a hassle to opt-out, even when it did become annoying, so I'm still on GMail but not G+. Hence, it's not a shock to me that probably a lot of other people did exactly the same.
Just because you offer "your" Facebook, doesn't mean I'll immediately move everything off my Facebook to change to you. No matter how good you are.
The reason is that "a single source for services" wasn't their plan. Their plan was "Steal users from facebook, by going absolutely nuts pushing G+".
Cyber bullying is the reason I don't want my real name attached to everything so a bully can follow me from one website to the next.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.