Oh Google Plus You Are Learning From Your Mistakes
October 15, 2014
Google has alienated many potential users for any of its services by forcing them to open a universal Google Plus account. Some argue that the benefits outweigh the negative factors, but others say they do not need another email or social media account. Ars Technica has an interesting article, “Google Nixes G+ Requirement For Gmail Accounts” explaining that Google is listening to its users.
Gmail users will soon be liberated from forced enrollment in Google Plus starting in early September. Mandatory enrollment in Google Plus to access Gmail has been a topic of consternation, boiling over when YouTube users had to join Google or they wouldn’t be able to post videos or comments anymore. It transformed into a colossal mess and the YouTube comments are still rolling out.
When Vic Gundotra left the company in April 2014, Google Plus stopped being at the forefront of products and services are slowly becoming individual entities again.
However…
“Even though forced G+ integration continues to disappear, Google’s push towards global identity management across its services isn’t going away—you can still use a single Google account for YouTube, Gmail, the Google Play store, and so on. However, making G+ optional makes it much easier to carve out and manage multiple identities across services; it’s getting easier to maintain a YouTube account that has nothing to do with your Gmail account or your Google Play account, for example. For people who prefer to keep different components of their online identity firmly segregated—as I do—this is a very, very good thing.”
Maintaining some form of multiple Internet identities has returned. Also Google Plus was supposed to make search more personal and touted the “search of the future” tagline. Not anymore!
Whitney Grace, October 15, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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