Eric Schmidt: If You Don’t Want To Use Your Real Name, Don’t Use Google+ [View All]

[onehandle]

Google+ was meant to be an identity service, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said this weekend, shedding some light on Google’s reasoning behind Google+’s controversial real-name policy. Google’s requirement that members of its social layer, Google+, use only their real names has been a point of contention for several weeks — especially for people with uncommon names and people who prefer to use pseudonyms. Schmidt’s comments at the Edinburgh International TV Festival reveal a new perspective on Google+.

NPR’s Andy Carvin asked Schmidt how Google justifies its names policy when it could put people at risk.

“He replied by saying that G+ was build 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,” Carvin wrote in a Google+ post. “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+.”

Paraphrasing Schmidt’s comments, Carvin wrote that the Google exec also said the Internet “would be better if we knew you were a real person rather than a dog or a fake person. Some people are just evil and we should be able to ID them and rank them downward.”

http://mashable.com/2011/08/28/google-plus-identity-service

Way ahead of you. Google+ usage is barely used by the early adopters and will be forgotten by the end of the year.

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