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Comment by joshfraser | Hacker News Reader

Google gives us all a lot of amazing technology completely free of charge. I use their search engine, email client and browser every day and for me their products are second to none. Google is one of the few companies that is really investing in the future with things like Google Glass and self driving cars. Personally, I'm okay with a few ads if that's what it takes for them to keep innovating and making the world a more interesting place.

That said, all these attempts to strong arm people into using Google Plus are really getting old.

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It is because Google + is their new identity service. Everything requires it, instead of a gmail account. Google + is your Google identity. At the same time it is also a social platform because so what? Don't use it. Or, use it since it's really really useful.

The amount of rage people express about being "forced" to use Google + is as perplexing to Google as it is to me. It's an identity service.

You don't need to have a gmail account to use Google's services anymore you just need a Google identity. That's what Google + is. I don't know how many times I can say it but so far it seems like a lot of times. People want to rage.

Right, but the confusion is that both the identity service and their social network are called Google+. So it is hardly surprising that people get confused when they call two supposedly distinct services by the same name. Why not just call the identity service Google Account and then all the perception problems go away. Seems like a huge PR blunder. But then I'm not actually sure how much google really care about this, I think the rage about it is amplified in our HN crowd. Most google customers probably don't notice and of the ones that do the majority likely don't care.

I agree to a certain extent. But Google + and the identity service are so closely linked that I am having trouble imagining how they could have called it Google Account since everyone would be wondering what they need Google + for. Which is happening anyway but people haven't figured out the part where Google + is your Google identity yet. Even on, or especially on HN/Youtube.

The ability to comment and talk about stuff is going to permeate all of Google's services. I don't really see how else they could do it.

Maybe if they didn't force you to use your real name then everyone wouldn't be having freak outs?

But Google has not just started using G+ accounts for YT comments, they have mixed G+ shares with YT comments. Now much of what I see below YT videos are G+ shares along the lines of, "hey check out this cool video". That's actually less informative than the average YT comment.

You're assuming that the confusion isn't intentional. It is, to make people sign up for Google+ while disguising it as a identity service.

And more and more normal customers seem to be noticing, especially on Youtube. Here's one woman crying about about how the confusing G+ prompts lead her to lose all her uploaded videos. (Warning, strong language) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccxiwu4MaJs

They should just:

- Start using the name "Google+" only for the feed / social network functionality. Because thats what people think it is.

- Make the social network an optional service.

- Separate the single-signon solution from Google+. Call it "Google Account" or something similar.

- Provide easy to use account identity functionality (instead of using "pages").

- Ask users if they want to keep the existing identity or use their master identity ONCE per service. Respect their decision.

- Allow users to switch to/from using separate identities from/to using the master identity.

This is what the old Google would've done. You know, the one that actually tried pretty hard to do the right thing (i.e. don't be evil). Not the one that is desperately trying to compete with Facebook.

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