Google+ is 'Identity Service,' Not Social Network

[Guest Bernie]

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.'

 

 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20096313-264/what-happens-when-google-cuts-you-off/

 

http://botgirl.blogspot.com/2011/08/executive-chairman-eric-schidt-admits.html?showComment=1314459245940#c7744671925115289782

[Guest Consumer Watchdog]

Google executive Eric Schmidt will finally testify on Capitol Hill this week after our year and a half long campaign to bring him to the Congress.

We launched this new animated video today to welcome him. Called “Supercharge,” the third avatar animation in our “Don’t Be Evil” series exposes actual quotes by Schmidt and new Google CEO Larry Page, showing the two Google executives stalking a US Senator through the signal in his Android mobile phone.

If a stranger followed us all day and took notes, it would be called stalking. But Google tracks us all day and night online and through our mobile phones, then profits wildly from the personal information.

The video and campaign is designed to dramatize Google’s information monopoly and make the case for Do Not Track Legislation. Please watch the 1 minute “Supercharge” video and share it with your friends.

Eric Schmidt recently said, “Your phone knows who you are, where you are and where you are going. It can see your path.” Page’s idea of “supercharging” the Android is to give it greater power to follow you, collect information about you, and market you based on your location.

As Congress takes on Google’s consolidation of the Internet and mobile phone markets, it’s time to raise the issue of how Google’s information monopoly threatens our privacy.

Thanks for watching, sharing and all your support.

[Luke_Wilbur]

This bummed me out. First remove Anonymity, then obscure Free Thinkers.

 

Google Moving to Help Destroy Anonymity

 

Google’s motto is “Do No Evil“. And Google notes in a patent application:

When users reveal their identities on the internet, it leaves them more vulnerable to stalking, identity theft and harassment.

 

So you might assume that Google is fighting to protect anonymity on the web.

But Schmidt’s new book reveals that Google will support the destruction of anonymity (via Wall Street Journal):

 

Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.

Search Engine Journal

explains

:

 

[Passages from Schmidt's book] confirm what many industry writers have been passionately clattering away about for months now.

Google+ is an identity verification network

.

As the network continues to grow, content associated with a verified identity will rise to the top of Google search rankings.

 

(Google+ is now the world’s

second most popular social network

.)

In other words, Schmidt acknowledges (in the first quote above) that authoritarians want to destroy anonymity … and Google will help them do so.

 

http://www.globalres...5322542?print=1