Google+ is primarily an “identity service”
It was the former Google CEO’s remarks about the rationale for this policy that were most interesting: He didn’t just say—as Vic Gundotra, the Google executive in charge of the new social network has—that having real names maintains a certain tone of behavior that is preferable to anonymous forums (an argument that online-community pioneer Derek Powazek has also made). According to Carvin, Schmidt said the reason Google needs users with real names is that the company sees Google+ as the core of an identity platform it is building that can be used for other things:
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.
As Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson noted in a blog post in response to Schmidt’s comments, this is an admission by the company that it wants to be an identity gatekeeper. Others have made similar observations since the launch of Google+.
Programmer and online veteran Dave Winer, for example, said—when the real-name policy first started to become a hot-button issue—that Google’s purpose was clearly to “provide identity in a commerce-ready way. And to give them information about what you do on the Internet, without obfuscation of pseudonyms.” In his blog post, Fred Wilson said:
It begs the question of whom Google built this service for? You or them. And the answer to why you need to use your real name in the service is because they need you to.
But the real-name issue has more to do with Google’s other business: namely, advertising. Users who are anonymous or pseudonymous are arguably a lot less valuable to advertisers than those who choose to attach their real identitie—including their age, gender, location, and further demographic details—to their accounts.
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