back to article Google top brass (and Zuck) hit Google+ privacy button

Mark Zuckerberg, Google founders Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and a whole raft of Google's top brass have suddenly activated the privacy settings on their Google+ profiles. Even though they want you to expose your entire life to world+dog over the interwebs, they would rather not. The newly activated privacy settings has made it …

COMMENTS

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  1. J 3
    Joke

    Wait...

    So even Mark Zuckerberg has jumped ship, then?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "newly activated privacy settings has made it impossible to see who is following them on Google+"

    But isn't that supposedly one of its big points? And as privacy *is* a big feature that is being currently tested, should we be surprised that certain people wanna see if it works as advertised?

    Who would follow Zuckerfuck, anyhow? I don't even believe he's a real person anyway.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Who would follow Zuckerfuck, anyhow? I don't even believe he's a real person anyway.

      You're right - I'm not.

  3. Andrew Moore
    Thumb Up

    First thing I did...

    ...when I got my Google+ account. Interestingly Zuckerberg had not switched it on at that point.

  4. jubtastic1
    Stop

    I'm confused

    Wasn't it just days ago they said that private profiles would be deleted?

    1. nyelvmark

      Wasn't it just days ago they said that private profiles would be deleted?

      And where did you hear that? If it was here, then you need to read the entire article and the comments to understand.

      In case that's too difficult: If you created a gmail account in the past, you had the option to create a profile containing all sorts of personal information about yourself (but only if you added it - you could create a profile calling yourself "Santa Claus", "Master Toy Maker", "Number 1, Pole street, North Pole"). You further had the option to make this profile Public or Private. In the latter case, you were the only person who could read that info, which made it rather pointless.

      This week, Google announced that they would soon delete all that data uploaded by users who won't let other users see it. This has no effect on anyone who never pointlessly created such a profile. You are still free to use Google services as before. If you have no profile, there is no change. If you have a public profile, there is no change. Only if you have a Google account, and spent long hours deciding how your private profile should look, despite the fact that only you can see it, then you need to do something.

      1. Eddy Ito

        Actually

        I'd wager they are making the non-profiles public. As you so cleverly pointed out, an empty profile is currently a dis-positive or null, depending on your burden of proof choice. It only seems reasonable that the GOOG can make a null profile public without saying shit to anyone and if you then happen to populate your particular null, as it is a personal null after all, that it is now public. No, I don't know why one would choose to lick it at the pub but hey, it's their choice and if they aren't totally hot, I know another pub.

      2. Twilight

        explain...

        @nyelvmark, which completely misses the point. It appears that all these big-wigs are setting their profiles private and it was announced recently that private profiles would be deleted. So please explain what's going on (some of us aren't on Google+ yet and can't look at settings to see if you can have a "public" profile that gives no info (and then what's the difference between that and a private profile?)).

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Trollface

          Re: explain...

          Google profile != Google+ profile

          I for one haven't even bothered to create a google profile for my gmail account. If I understand it correctly, Google+ is a different service that is meant to be like Facebook, while you Google profile was just that, a profile attached to your google account.

          don't take my word on it, I most likely am wrong.

      3. amehaye
        Thumb Down

        The problem with public profiles

        Google mandates that you expose your full name and gender. Given that many people use their full name as their email address, this is spammers heaven. I, for one, will not join Google+ until I can limit the visibility of my profile to something smaller than 'world and dog'.

      4. jubtastic1
        FAIL

        Unbelievably I did read the article, and the comments

        And I totally understand that having your profile deleted doesn't mean your Email etc gets deleted.

        Yet it seems clear that google+ requires a profile to work and that said profile has to be public, hence my sarcasm.

        In case that's too hard for you to understand, I'm pointing out the blatant hypocrisy.of requiring users google+ profiles be public under the pain of deletion while Google top brass sets theirs to private, YFM.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Trollface

          Re: Unbelievably I did read the article, and the comments

          actually, according to another commenter (scroll down), this was glitch. If you access the links provided in this article, you will find those top brasses back in the list again.

          so this might be a bug and not double standard

          sadly.... none of them have any "friends".... hehehehheeeee

  5. supervan
    Facepalm

    So what?!

    Being able to control your privacy is the whole point of G+

    If this was Facebook, then sure you would have had a point. Why should anyone (including the founders) have to make anything public they don't want to?

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Google is full of hypocrits

    News at 11

  7. Eddy Ito
    Black Helicopters

    That doesn't answer the question!

    Do Zuckster and the GOOG elite get the same privacy button as the rest of us?

  8. Gannon (J.) Dick
    Childcatcher

    This smells of Insider Trading

    World-class cynic that I am, I cannot help but see this as an overt attempt by Google to lure the SEC (stock watchdogs) into a turf war with the FTC (anti-trust issues).

    "We just can't be bothered with anti-trust right now because some rogue engineer only told insiders that the privacy of Google+ was shit when she should have told everybody, and that was wrong and our stock might plunge a dime or more any day now and for god's sakes won't someone think of the children, etc. etc. etc." or something like that.

    Maybe it's just me.

  9. Gritzwally Philbin
    FAIL

    Privacy's Irrelevant..

    When the majority of posts are meaningless. Ermmm. so far, Google+ is working exactly the same as facebook.. in that I'm already blocking posts from friends that blather all day about *nothing*..

    I really, REALLY do not care at all for Web 2.0.

    1. Sam Liddicott

      Irrelevant?

      "Privacy's Irrelevant.. When the majority of posts are meaningless"

      Meaningless posts become very meaningful when they have the power to make privacy irrelevant.

  10. supervan

    This was a glitch - according to Vic Gundoltra

    "Yes - this was glitch that affected small number of people - those with very high followers and few people in their circles."

    The above comment posted by +Vic Gundoltra in response to the post below by Danny Sullivan...

    Danny Sullivan - 4:21 AM - Public

    +Mark Zuckerberg is back, baby, top Google+ user with 166,000 followers. And +Vic Gundotra is back in the listings. So's +Larry Page, +Sergey Brin & +Matt Cutts. Was it just a glitch that caused all those profiles not to show followers? C'mon gang, none of you going to tell us what was going on?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    do you remember

    ...the old days when a mobile phone was a tool for important brief communication about business deals, meetings and people finding out what time you'd be back in the office?

    Now it is largely a tool for lazy people on trains and buses to waste hours jabbering inane, boring chit-chat about what some mutual acquaintance is up to.

    And now thanks to Facebook et al, the internet has gone the same way - from being largely useful to being largely used to waste time by bored people with no lives.

    In a few years, they'll be able to waste hours of their meaningless lives with the same mind-numbing chit chat on super holographic 3d touchscreens.

    Isn't technology grand.

    1. Ru
      FAIL

      "And now thanks to Facebook"

      Uh, what? Do you really, genuinely believe that the internet was all serious business before the current batch of social networks popped up? Like the iPhone did with smartphones, all they did was make it popular amongst non-techies. For reams of endless inane drivel, take a look at Livejournal. Even that is a relatively recent phenomenon, and it predates FB by years.

      1. lurker

        yup

        Anyone who was on usenet 20 years ago (yes, there was an internet before the web) knows that 90% of the content has always been random chatter, rather than 'serious business use'.

    2. Lamont Cranston

      Yes, and tv was created to educate and inform,

      and now people just watch Corrie. How dare people make use of technology in a manner which suits them?

      Do you get upset when you see a wheel attached to anything other than a wheelbarrow?

      1. Gavin King

        Wheelbarrow?

        If I recall correctly, the wheelbarrow is a relative late-comer: wheels were originally used on carts, which require at least two of the things.

        Don't quote me on it though: this is just my recollections from my school days.

        (Incidentally, I remember a fellow pupil complaining about all the long and complicated words that we had to learn, and that we didn't nee them to be so big. The teacher replied, "Words like wheelbarrow, then?". I Still find it faintly amusing, but maybe that's just me.)

        GK

  12. Andy Farley
    Thumb Down

    I joined.

    I left. It's just another thing to manage.

  13. Mystic Megabyte
    Stop

    Buddies?

    I have a standard Gmail account with no profile, no "Buzz" and no "Chat". Last week an indicator icon popped up saying that I had a "Buddy".

    I checked my account settings and disabled anything else that I could find.

    I don't want no fecking buddies!

  14. Kay Burley ate my hamster
    Meh

    Facebook == Windows 98

    You know that feeling you get when you go back to an old unsecured version of windows. It's slow, bits are broken, you don't quite understand why things are so unintuitive?

    G+ feels like a new beginning, it is based on a strong security model, everything is shared via groups, when you loose the mindset of Facebook and understand that you know who will see your post the prospect of posting to FB is scary.

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