Comment by kibwen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kibwen | Hacker News Reader

I noticed the same clause in the TOS last week and was taken aback. Ideally I'd love to be able to distribute my Google+ URL with the same confidence as I distribute my email address: namely, if you send a message to this address, you can guarantee that I'm the one who receives it. The fear here is that, should Google start charging for this "service" in the future, and should I decline to play along, someone else could squat on my former URL and intercept any traffic intended for my page. Please, Google, for my own peace of mind, either make this a paid service up-front, or pledge that a given URL will always alias to the same individual.

(Though perhaps the email analogy is a bad one, since IIRC both Yahoo and MSN periodically release long-dormant addresses back into the eligible pool. Though still unsettling, it's a more reasonable approach than "we may force you to start paying us an unknown amount at some unknown future date".)

Ultimately, I was about to go through with it anyway until I realized that doing so would require me to register a phone number with my Google account, which I have so far avoided. That requirement was the final straw.

Ultimately, I was about to go through with it anyway until I realized that doing so would require me to register a phone number with my Google account, which I have so far avoided. That requirement was the final straw.

Absolutely understandable.

For those who have accidentally been opt-ed in to this scummy Google behaviour, you can still opt out: https://www.google.com/settings/phone

You might still need to go to your profile afterwards and delete the phone. You should be allowed to. Seriously though: Has it come to this? Do we need to treat Google like Facebook? Expect the worst at every turn?

As for Google taking a turn for the worse...

Am I the only one thinking they are literally fucking up every thing they do these days? I had the (dis)pleasure of re-visiting my Google Apps console this week. What used to take 30 seconds-done, now took 2 hours of Googling and experimenting until I realized that the new Admin-console was simply broken and couldn't do what the old one could do. It's completely dysfunctional.

Let me re-iterate that: The main product Google has to enable services for paying customers doesn't work any more. Now it just lists already enabled services. That's it.

When did Google get so utterly lost? One thing is PR, which is something they obviously still need to learn proper. But breaking their own services? Isn't there a single soul which still cares about delivering at Google?

What the fuck happened?

> I was about to go through with it anyway until I realized that doing so would require me to register a phone number with my Google account, which I have so far avoided. That requirement was the final straw

That's exactly how I feel. I try very hard to not give my number out, why the hell does google force me to tell them, just to get a URL?

If I had to guess, and this really is just a guess, I'd say the phone number requirement is an attempt to discourage whatever the short-url equivalent of domain squatting is.

I think it's for Google accounts in general. Even getting a gmail account requires this.

It didn't when I signed up, and thus far, I've not been forced to add it.

it's not, it asks for one but you can omit it, even though it will keep bugging you about it from time to time.

Perhaps that's a new requirement. Some of us don't bother with mobile phones. I signed up for an account, at one time it asked, another it didn't. Try and empty your browser cache and try again.

So you don't have two factor authentication set for your Google account(s)?

I love two factor auth, but I don't like that it uses my phone number. I really wish I could buy one of those RSA SecurID two factor auth key fobs from any hardware supplier like NewEgg and just register the serial number of the device with Google or any other company I want to use two factor auth with.

Even better would be to allow me to register backup two factor auth key fobs and I can just throw one or two backups in a safe deposit box, safe or similar safe place.

Why should Google agree to give away something to you for free forever? They are doing you and the majority of the users (who will never pay for Facebook/Google Plus/Github) a favor by providing the service without charging you a dime. They reserve the right to charge you in the future. If this changes, they will let you know.

I'm perfectly fine with paying for things! In fact, I'm ecstatic at the opportunity to pay for valuable online services. Did you miss the bit of my post where I exhort Google to "make this a paid service up-front"? But what's not cool is offering a means of universal personal identity for free (with the concomitant lock-in this entails), and then sneaking a clause into your TOS revealing your intentions to begin charging for this service at some future date, especially when there is no indication as to what the magnitude of that charge would be! $10 per year? I'd pay that, if my profile was especially important to me. I already pay as much for my personal domain names. $100 per year? Almost certainly not, unless G+ was the world's most important social network. Or maybe it's $X*N per year, where X is the number of unique visits your page gets per year and N is an arbitrary multiplier? We have absolutely no idea! We can't even speculate. It's a black box, a landmine, and it's executed in bad faith by tucking it away where only the most technical of users will ever notice it.

My only concern would be the link rot that might occur if your urls are later rewritten to the new username. Which makes a mockery of having the vanity urls in the first place. Having said that I can't even work out if a single Google+ post has it's own URI, or how I find it even.

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