Google Plus has been seen to be Facebook's biggest threat so far!
Facebook’s biggest “weakness” thus far has been its tendency to pay
little (or from some people’s point of view, no) attention to users’
privacy.
And that’s the very question Google set out to answer when they
launched Google+ a few months ago. But over the last weeks, Google’s
controversial real-name policy has been a major talking point among tech
circles. The company requires users of its social layer to sign up with
their real names, rather than pseudonyms or aliases.
Chairman Eric Schmidt was quoted this weekend as having stated that Google Plus is primarily an identity service.
“He (Eric) replied by saying that G+ was built primarily as an identity service, so fundamentally, it depends on people using their real names if they’re going to build future products that leverage that information,” Andy Cavin blogged on a Google+ blog.
Regarding people who are concerned about their safety, he said G+ is completely optional. No one is forcing you to use it. It’s obvious for people at risk if they use their real names, they shouldn’t use G+. Regarding countries like Iran and Syria, people there have no expectation of privacy anyway due to their government’s own policies, which implies (to me, at least) that Schmidt thinks there’s no point of even trying to have a service that allows pseudonyms.
Unfortunately, the way the Q&A was conducted, I wasn’t in a position to ask him a followup on this particular point.”
I’ve previously posted angry comments about people who use names such
as “Schzxy Swagboy” on Facebook. For such an account to send you a
friend request, when the profile picture is say, that of a
cow/draggon/car makes totally no sense.
Facebook can allow a user to change their “real names” a maximum of 8
times. But even after this number has been reached, the user has the
option to hop from one of those names to another whenever they wish: But
in addition to this, Facebook has what they call the “Alternative Name”
which is usually to help people who utilize the search feature.
In that regard, one would argue that Facebook has more respect to privacy: how ironic!
So I would like to mention that I partly agree with Google’s
real-name policy. If well executed, it’ll help “make the web better” as
they’ve always pointed that they target to do, although it’s definitely
harmful to potential users such as political activists, victims of
harassment and numerous other groups for whom using a real name online
might pose a safety risk.
Speaking of Google+, I’ve spent a few weeks without logging into my
account. I have been slow to comment on where I think the project will
go. But in the least reasoned of opinions, I’d like to think Google’s
supposed collision-course with Facebook will only strengthen Google’s
position in its other products, especially Search, without necesarilly
“killing” Facebook.
Remember what the blogs wrote the day G+ launched? “Google launched
Facebook killer”. I don’t think that’s going to happen… not after the
most recent comparison between pageviews published by comScore – or even
more worryingly, Google’s AdPlanner: but that’s another story
altogether.
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