Google+ itself is a good service, but my distaste for it comes from taking a look at a "bigger picture", as this is not just about sharing cat photos and fart jokes online.
Let me begin by saying I don't hate it, I just see it as a poor decision as Google+ allows Google to make a verified and robust profile of me for sale or subpoena, while giving me very little more than what facebook already offers. (Keeping in mind that while the USA already has low-requirements for digital subpoenas, it's still heading towards a completely warrantless-everything approach for digital information.)
G+ picks up where GMail and Google Analytics weren't able to go:
- It will have my full name (with google killing off accounts that were using pseudonyms.)
- It has my phone number and contacts: With a Google+ on my phone it has access to my contacts, geographic location and phone number.
- It follows me around the web far better than what Analytics was able to achieve.
- It follows me around real life: It can know what I'm doing and where I'm doing it, even if it has nothing to do with the web such as tagging, GPS-photos from all current era mobile devices, events and location based ("geo-everything") services.
Then when I include other google-owned services such as search, maps, youtube & blogger. I'm left placing a huge amount of information and trust in a company that has a business model defined by profiling me, a history of providing information to the USA government (don't forget Chinese hacking) and a track record of storing more than what I bargained for (such as Google Desktop) with the later landing them in hot water with the EFF.
I take pause because I live in a country where there was raging debate about combining the profiles from various government run services as it gives the government an orwellian-like power over it's citizens (they remained separate). Plus it provides an obvious target for those looking to abuse the data. When you consider that in the judicial system, a judge must approve the fishing and combining of this sort of information, I'm not about to hand over the same level of information to a company free from oversight.
Let me begin by saying I don't hate it, I just see it as a poor decision as Google+ allows Google to make a verified and robust profile of me for sale or subpoena, while giving me very little more than what facebook already offers. (Keeping in mind that while the USA already has low-requirements for digital subpoenas, it's still heading towards a completely warrantless-everything approach for digital information.)
G+ picks up where GMail and Google Analytics weren't able to go:
- It will have my full name (with google killing off accounts that were using pseudonyms.)
- It has my phone number and contacts: With a Google+ on my phone it has access to my contacts, geographic location and phone number.
- It follows me around the web far better than what Analytics was able to achieve.
- It follows me around real life: It can know what I'm doing and where I'm doing it, even if it has nothing to do with the web such as tagging, GPS-photos from all current era mobile devices, events and location based ("geo-everything") services.
Then when I include other google-owned services such as search, maps, youtube & blogger. I'm left placing a huge amount of information and trust in a company that has a business model defined by profiling me, a history of providing information to the USA government (don't forget Chinese hacking) and a track record of storing more than what I bargained for (such as Google Desktop) with the later landing them in hot water with the EFF.
I take pause because I live in a country where there was raging debate about combining the profiles from various government run services as it gives the government an orwellian-like power over it's citizens (they remained separate). Plus it provides an obvious target for those looking to abuse the data. When you consider that in the judicial system, a judge must approve the fishing and combining of this sort of information, I'm not about to hand over the same level of information to a company free from oversight.