Questions raised by Google's 'Real Names' policy
Google+ has been the subject of lots of comment in the media, blogs, wikis, email and even (shades of the 1960s!) around the water cooler in the office. What’s being talked about isn’t any single aspect of G+, but there is one aspect that’s of interest to us: Google’s “Real Names” policy.
Google+ uses your Google profile as your identity holder — identifiers and attributes about you. In talking about profiles, Google has a policy which states:
“Google services support three different types of use when it comes to your identity: unidentified, pseudonymous, identified. Google Profiles is a product that works best in the identified state. This way you can be certain that you’re connecting with the right person, and others will have confidence knowing that there is someone real behind the profile that they’re looking at. For this reason, Google Profiles requires you to use the name that you commonly go by in daily life.”
MORE: Google explains its data correlation privacy settings
But who is it that needs to have this confidence that you’re a real person in Google+? After all, you choose who you connect with, presumably a person you already know, right?
But there’s an added benefit in Google+ — Circles:
“You share different things with different people. But sharing the right stuff with the right people shouldn’t be a hassle. Circles makes it easy to put your friends from Saturday night in one circle, your parents in another, and your boss in a circle by himself, just like real life.”
The question is, do “your friends from Saturday night,” “your parents” and “your boss” all know you by the same name? Probably not. Then there are acquaintances, spouses/significant others, children, childhood friends and on and on. Odds are that there are a number of different names you’re known by. So which one is your “real” name? Google offers a helpful(?) hint:
“If you’re referred to by more than one name, just choose one and place the others in the ‘Other names’ section of your profile.”
The “real name,” though, is the one used to identify you with all of your Circles — so which do you choose?
This is a serious flaw, and it leads to a bigger one which we’ll explore in the next issue.
