Google will no longer allow private Google profiles after July 31st | Hacker News Reader

Google will no longer allow private Google profiles after July 31st

thenextweb.com

41 pointstilt35 comments

hugely linkbait title (same as the article, not blaming submitter). And it looks like it may have been something more accurate originally, note the text of the link (to the same article) in the top 4 links:

>No private profiles on Google ...

Gotta wonder who pushed for this title.

According to Google[1]: "Deleting your profile won't delete your Google Account."

Keep that in mind before you get too outraged at this.

[1]http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#...

A Google profile is not the same thing as a Facebook profile. You can have a Google account without a Google profile. That's why when you delete a profile, it doesn't mean it deletes the whole account.

Geesh, such a misleading article. Was this pushed by that Facebook PR firm again?

This sounds scary at first, but it seems to only apply to a profile which I have apparently or apparently not created.

They have the default right too (unlike facebook): I don't get an automatic opt-in, I get an automatic opt-out.

The only thing left to clarify (as mostly_harmless writes) is the connection of a profile to other gmail services. If they get the balance wrong here, they're done. If they don't - and they seem to be doing a pretty good job so far.

does this mean that you would not be able to make gmail accounts without them being linked to your identity?

How far does this go, and what would be the visible effect on account management with google products?

It looks like (for now at least) Google Apps users are exempt, I get the "This service is not available" message.

Google apps users cannot currently create profiles. This is causing a bit of a problem among those of us which want to use our google apps accounts on Google+. They are looking to have this working in the coming months though.

The article says:

>If you currently have a private profile but you do not wish to make your profile public, you can delete your profile. Or, you can simply do nothing. All private profiles will be deleted after July 31, 2011.

I'd assume this means you can make Gmail accounts not linked to your identity so long as you don't make a Google Profile.

Name, ok... but why "gender"?

I suspect it's due to internationalization reasons. Even in English, we don't really have useful singular third-person gender-neutral pronouns (yes, I'm aware of "they", but it's actually a debated topic). In other languages where everything has genders, there might not be a reason to have gender neutral pronouns whatsoever.

So what? Gender isn't relevant to every online activity.

A century ago we didn't have any gender neutral clothing, either: if we need better pronouns, then let's make some up.

>if we need better pronouns, then let's make some up.

For every language?

Perhaps Google finds asking users for their gender (which is highly correlated with your name, anyway) to be an easier task than introducing the necessary pronouns into every language in the globe.

What about languages that don't have gender neutral pronouns?

Google isn't (yet) using it for selecting pronouns and/or they don't seem to have a problem using "their" as a neutral pronoun: http://i.imgur.com/1B5rT.png

They'll claim it's for customization of prompts ("His photos", "her updates"), but that's a cop-out. Think of the possibilities when you can sell such demographic details to your advertisers. Now it should start making sense.

gender is actually highly sensitive for a lot of people as well, especially being forced into male/female buckets (which are actually sex and not gender).

There's a world of pain for them in this.

Just verified, they have an "Other" selection. This isn't forcing anyone into a bucket.

Oh yeah, publicly stating "other" is so much better =|

Do profiles get made automatically when you use <anything> or is this something manual you have to do?

You have to create one! It picks profile pics etc which you have already shared.

You can search your name here https://profiles.google.com/

It's not true that you have to create a profile. If you want to use Google+, you have to create a profile. If you just want to use Google apps/search/voice/chat/etc. then no, you don't.

Are the public profiles in Google search results? (I'm assuming they are.)

They're very explicit when you're creating it. If you read any text on your screen, you can't miss it.

This is irresponsibly misleading. Here is the relevant text:

http://www.google.com/support/profiles/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#...

If you currently have a private profile but you do not wish to make your profile public, you can delete your profile. Or, you can simply do nothing. All private profiles will be deleted after July 31, 2011.

Private profiles will be deleted not become public, the author should be ashamed.

I bet the author got exactly what he aimed for, which is a lot of traffic. This type of news writer intentionally aims for such sensationalistic headlines, even though they end up dis-informing people (one great example of this is Fox news).

wtf are you two talking about. The author never says anything about them "becoming public". He just says that after the 31st, all profiles will BE public (since they delete all private ones).

Which, because it doesn't imply any are excluded ("all profiles"), implies all existing profiles, public and private, will be public. From there it's a pretty straight conclusion to think they'll switch existing private ones to public. The rest of the article (actual text of release excluded) reinforces this conclusion, and does precisely nothing to discourage it.

Of course, anyone reading the actual text of the release will understand what's going on. But A) clearly few of the commenters there did so, and B) they've already linkbaited their way to free advertising / ad revenue.

Well, that won't affect me, because I'm a paying google apps user, which makes me a second class citizen without a profile. Good-oh.

Imagine if Facebook did this. again. the world might just end.

Shhhh, you're on HN. Google is the be all end all. Look how they gather in denial.

Who the hell voted me down and why. That's actually ridiculous.

Thanks for the self-reply. It allowed me to downvote you twice!

That's just not fair at all.

And private profiles will be deleted. You are getting down voted because you are making this out to be a bigger issue than it is.

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