Goodbye googleplus!

[cavocorax]

I finally made my decision and shut down my google+ account yesterday. I'm still using gmail, but I'm turning to duckduckgo for search, and flickr for photos. It's a start. I'll still monitor this community though because I really liked what googleplus had to offer, and if they ever pull their heads out of their... ykw's, then I'd like to come back.

Based on what Schmidt has been saying about his vision for the platform, I don't see that happening anytime soon. It's important for me to support websites that allow personal freedom and privacy (Dreamwidth FTW!), and I honestly don't get why Google can't allow people to use G+ with a stable pseudonym. That person is just as accountable as someone using their real name. They're still traceable. They're easily blockable if they turn into trolls. And it's not like google doesn't have a billion bits of info on them anyways - what's in a name? A real name? :|

I was comfortable using my real name on G+ (as I saw it as a facebook replacement service), but I want to support the right of others not to use their own name. And by staying on G+ I was tacitly approving. So that's that.

Sounds like diaspora may be the next big thing anyways. :P

But I feel betrayed. I really wanted to trust Google. I had so many arguments with my bf about how they're not an "evil corporation" and how innovative and awesome they were. Boy... did I ever lose that one. Also, who talks about evil people anyway? The whole "don't be evil" thing is pretty silly. I understand the concept - make money in advertising without being sneaky/underhanded/immoral, but using the word "evil" is a bit... odd? IMHO.

But the draconian way in which they are enforcing their name policy, and the name policy in general makes me think that I should be less trusting in what I give to them. I was everything google before. I liked the idea of having things tied together and it was convenient. I knew Google was mining my data to sell to marketers but I trusted them to keep it anonymous enough that I still felt safe. That trust seems to have been misplaced. I don't know that I can walk away from everything google yet, but I am far more aware than I was before. I need to trust someone with this info, but perhaps splitting it between different corporations that don't work together would be the best.

Search engines that aren't Google

[firecat]

For the folks on here who are disillusioned with Google because of the G+ names policy, I made a list of alternative search engines.

http://firecat.dreamwidth.org/741985.html