back to article Google+ is an identity service, Schmidt says

Hoping, perhaps, to bring the curtain down on the so-called ‘nym wars’, Google chairman Eric Schmidt has discussed the advertising giant’s identity policies in a Q&A at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International TV Festival. Google+, which the outside world thinks of as another social networking service, is in fact something …

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  1. Mike Flugennock
    Coffee/keyboard

    Creepiest, evilest shit EVER...

    ...but at least we heard it from Mr. Creepy himself. Sonofabitch really doesn't get it, and really doesn't care.

    One more reason to stay the hell away from Google+ -- as if I needed any more reasons than the fact it's from Google.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I think he does

      Putting two sentences together:

      "there are people who do really evil and wrong things on the Internet, and it would be useful if we had strong identity so we could weed them out." ... "we could check them, we could give them things …bill them, you know, we could have credit cards and so forth … there are all sorts of reasons."

  2. Chris Thomas Alpha
    FAIL

    google+ is dead

    rather than quell the problem, he just made it worse, people didn't sign up for G+ because it was an identity service, they signed up because, for example:

    a) thought they'd find something better than facebook

    b) thought it was a social network

    c) invited all their friends and was disappointed because nobody turned up

    and yes, even thought it's beta that just makes it worse, annoy them with the nymwars and rather than have an open door to let people replace those who leave due to the nymwars, they cap the number of users. all that is going to do is reduce the number of people in the network.

    people didn't sign up for that, did they? they signed up for a social network which might be better than facebook and then the next thing they hear, oh, it's really an identity service, with social network as a "hook" to get people to use it.....hmmm...doesn't sound so great anymore, sounds like you just got trapped like a monkey in a cage...oopsie, that banana doesn't look so tasty anymore now, does it....

    yes, I know it's optional, I know I don't HAVE to use it, or HAVE to sign up. But there is an old expression that starts with: one day they came for the journalists, but I was not a journalist, so I did nothing...

    each new restriction doesn't sound so bad until you look at the full picture, then you realise just how much you've lost, or how much things have changed. people don't realise that, so it's up to me to tell them, I argued with two technologically inclined friends the same situation just a couple of days ago, I was mouth open at how "I Don't care" they both were....

    lastly, do you need to be told I'm a real person? if I act a dick, I'm sure you can hit the block button yourself right? why does my real name matter? people act dicks all the time even with their real name. think for yourself, hit the button yourself, why does it matter my real name....it's easy to do and you actually get to use your brain for once rather than delegate to the almighty google.

    1. Gannon (J.) Dick
      Pint

      @Chris

      "Lastly, do you need to be told I'm a real person? if I act a dick, ..."

      I've actually been a Dick for 57 years. In spite of what Eric The Stupid says about his 20 year thought experiment, believe me when I say that people who want to correct "bad names" are much more evil than the shallow, uncritical thinkers.

      I agree with the rest too. Good rant :o)

      1. nyelvmark

        I've actually been a Dick for 57 years.

        I know people half your age who've been dicks for much longer than that.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Meh

    dichotomy

    Google would like to use this as a very detailed database of sales leads.

    Users would like to use it to communicate with each other.

    Until bto the user and Google want the same thing, it's not going to be perfect!

  4. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Stop

    "Who is Google One?" "You are Google Six!"

    Schmittchen's sayings are pretty schizotastic (let's stay charitable here). He will certainly be getting hearings and success in the corridors of power. And he has been thinking about the problems of identity since the Internet was telnet, usenet and IRC? Somewhat an authoritarian mindest here, wouldn't you think?

    At least Google comes clean about what it wants.

    NO! I DON'T WANNA BE A GOOGLE NUMBER!

  5. nyelvmark
    Happy

    No, wait...

    >> He admits this is a problem in countries with oppressive attitudes to their citizens or their citizens’ communications,

    >>but adds that “sensibilities are different”. “There, there’s no

    >> assumption of privacy, everybody assumes the Internet is bugged and that the secret police are after them.”

    Whereas, here in the west, we know that's not true, right?

    1. david wilson

      @nyelvmark

      >> >>"“There, there’s no assumption of privacy, everybody assumes the Internet is bugged and that the secret police are after them.”

      >>"Whereas, here in the west, we know that's not true, right?"

      Well, here, /most/ people /don't/ assume 'the secret police are after them'.

      Unless they're one of the fairly small number of people who have done something or are planning on doing something likely to be of interest to the security services, or they'd like to pretend they might be, or they have more serious issues.

      I'm struggling to think of people I know who might be of meaningful interest to UK security services, and honestly, I'm not sure I can think of anyone.

      I dare say that like most people, I will probably know some people who might be of interest to the /police/, but in the real world, I'm not sure how many of /them/ would lie awake at night worrying that their phone is being tapped or their web access snooped on.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Mein Gott

    The Google PR division need to gag Schmidt, tie him up and throw him into a sound-proof room.

    He has clearly lost the plot / become disconnected from normal people and is doing huge damage to the Google brand.

    Plus making himself sound like he wants to be the fuhrer of ze internet doesn't help (Yea, yea, Godwin invoked.)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      /r

      El Reg to please refer to Schmidt in future as 'Ze Fuhrer einz der Internets'.

      PLEEEEEEEEEASE?

    2. Ted 3
      Happy

      Bad for Google, good for the rest of humanity

      I agree that having Schmidt spout off his innermost fantasies is bad for the Google brand.

      However, I would argue that it serves a useful purpose to have the Schmidt-mind-leaks widely disseminated, for the good of rest of the world that is not Google. It gives us insight into some of the true intentions underlying some of Google's strategies. It also serves to remind us that, though more benign than most other corporations (either inside or outside IT), we cannot assume that everything Google does is entirely benevolent.

      Yes, Google's motto is "Don't be evil", but I think that we as the public should be the judge of that, not the Google PR department. My view: let Schmidt speak as often as possible!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Thumb Up

        Original AC here

        Yes, fully agreed. I was typing mainly for humourous intent ;~)

        I avoid google as much as possible now and when not possible I make sure all requets go via the googlesharing firefox extension.

        Mainly because of their post IPO actions, size and reach, and Ze Fuhrer einz der Internets

  7. Neoc

    Not using my real name.

    I am on Facebook, I'll admit it. And I'm on there using a pseudonym known to my friends. Why? Because I am an IT *professional* and I want to keep my private life separate from my professional life. So I use pseudonyms for my "private life" accounts. If Google can't get that through their little heads, then they have a serious problem.

    Hey, Google, here's a solution to your identity "problem" that most Forum software had since the 90s: People open accounts using their real name (for accountability) but are allowed to use a screen name for their posts (for anonymity). Why not translate that mechanism to G+, you idiots?

    1. jake Silver badge

      Other side of the coin, Neoc ...

      I am not on GooMyFaceYouTwit. I do have internet presence.

      My friends & family know how to access my personal site. And do.

      If you're all that gifted, why not create space that your friends & family can utilize, without having to access marketard-created space? It ain't exactly rocket science.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Facepalm

        Hilarious fail is hailrious.

        So ... neoc creates neocbook.com and invites all his / her friends. I create deebook.com and invite all my friends.

        So where does Terry, our mutual friend, post details about his party? Indeed, where does anyone post anything when everyone has their own social network site where everyonre is supposed to post? Should everyone post everything on every site? It may not be rocket science but you've certainly failed to understand its basic core principle. There's more than just "I" in social.

        1. jake Silver badge

          @John Dee

          "It may not be rocket science but you've certainly failed to understand its basic core principle. There's more than just "I" in social."

          But what you GooMyFaceYouTwits fail to understand is that the marketards are stripping dollars from you because you don't understand the medium you are attempting to utilize.

          Your bud Terry doesn't have anything to do with me & mine ... and quite frankly, none of us give a rat's ass about him/her. Terry's not important. We don't care.

          My social network involves actually rubbing elbows. Socializing.

          Scary, isn't it?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Paris Hilton

            Keep on failin'

            "you GooMyFaceYouTwits"

            I don't currently use any internet-based social networking services.

            "you [...] fail to understand"

            Do you have some evidence for this, or are you just accusing me of stupidity in order to cover up your own? You shouldn't equate using something that has negative effects with failing to understand those negative effects. For example, inhaling cigarette smoke. And you shouldn't be so blinded by the negatives of something that you can see no positive. For example, inhaling oxygen.

            Can you say cost-benefit analysis? The rest of us can.

            "the marketards are stripping dollars from you"

            I know you like to pretend that everything you consume was shat from the horse's ass, but somewhere along the line you bought something made by a company, and in all probability someone at that company took the time to smooth a few corners, to form that function a little, so that more units would shift, and someone else at that company took the time to tell people about the smoothed corners, so that more units would shift, and both those people almost certainly got paid for their time, and that payment was funded by an increase in the price of the thing with the smoothed corners, and boom, there you are being stripped by the marketards.

            "you don't understand the medium you are attempting to utilize."

            See above.

            "Your bud Terry doesn't have anything to do with me & mine ... and quite frankly, none of us give a rat's ass about him/her. Terry's not important. We don't care."

            And neoc and I couldn't give a damn about you and yours, but seeing as you brought them up ...

            "My social network involves actually rubbing elbows. Socializing."

            You don't phone your friends to invite them to parties?

            1. jake Silver badge

              @John Dee

              "I don't currently use any internet-based social networking services."

              So what's your point? Seems to me you're pretty much in the same space I am.

              "See above."

              See above.

              "And neoc and I couldn't give a damn about you and yours, but seeing as you brought them up ... "

              All y'all were twattering about so-called "social networking". I was pointing out the stupidity & fallacies of same.

              "You don't phone your friends to invite them to parties?"

              Uh ... no. WeRubElbows[tm] here in Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties. Local folks know where and when. Invitations are for out-of-towners & television "personalities", not locals ...

              Try to understand, local shit is local shit. The rest of the planet shouldn't care what we are doing here in Northern California, regardless of what a billion dollar global multinational marketing company is trying to sell ...

              ::wanders off, muttering about kids these days::

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Paris Hilton

                Twattering

                "Seems to me you're pretty much in the same space I am."

                No. I see the point of them. You don't. You think everyone who uses them is a twit. I don't.

                "All y'all were twattering ..."

                And then you joined in. Looks like you're not averse to a little twattery yourself, eh? On a platform that allows for socialising underwritten by advertising, no less.

                "I was pointing out the stupidity & fallacies of same."

                You tried. But suggesting that we all set up our own networking services was where the fail really started.

                "Uh ... no. WeRubElbows[tm] here in Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties."

                Funny. Every time, I've been that way, there's been telephone lines, internet, mobile phones, a postal service, satellite dishes, radio, etc. And you know ... I could have sworn you said you had a personal website that your friends and family access.

                "Local folks know where and when."

                Yeah? Communicated via smoke signal?

                "Try to understand, local shit is local shit. The rest of the planet shouldn't care what we are doing here in Northern California."

                In which case, get off the internet.

                "kids these days"

                Yeah, you've tried that one before. Lame.

                1. jake Silver badge

                  @John Dee

                  "But suggesting that we all set up our own networking services was where the fail really started."

                  And THAT, my friend, is where you totally miss the point.

                  If you have an Internet[tm] connected machine set up by yourself, by definition you have set up your own networking services. Most people using !GooMyFaceYouMSTwit have no idea as to the implications of this concept. They don't grok the fact that their personal information is being used (en-mass) by multi-billion dollar international marketing companies. Do you really not understand this? Or are you a shill for one of said companies?

                  Side note: Not smoke signals. Elbow rubs. We use modern communications, but for the most part most of us see each other face-to-face a couple-four times a month, or more, and that's how we communicate. Currently, Crush has started & we're tasting grape juice ...

                  1. Anonymous Coward
                    Anonymous Coward

                    Hello Brick Wall, this is Head.

                    "And THAT, my friend, is where you totally miss the point."

                    No, jake, it really isn't. I can see your point clumsily trying to raise itself onto its feet from several miles away.

                    "If you have an Internet[tm] connected machine set up by yourself, by definition you have set up your own networking services. "

                    And where does my gran, or anyone else untechnical fit into that? And where does one post an invite to a party on such a system. A node isn't a network you know. And a computer network isn't a social network You have to connect. You have to talk. So where does one post? Ones DNS server? Your personal website? Everyone's personal website?

                    "Most people using !GooMyFaceYouMSTwit have no idea as to the implications of this concept."

                    See above.

                    "They don't grok the fact that their personal information is being used (en-mass) by multi-billion dollar international marketing companies. "

                    Some do, some don't. Some folk don't understand a whole bunch of stuff. So what? Those that do understand that their personal information is being sold and use the services anyway have made a cost-benefit analysis and decided that use of the service is worth the price. That doesn't make them stupid. It just means they have different values from you. People are different, jake. Can you wrap your mind around that? I'd hate to live on a planet that was populated with jakes. As woud you.

                    "Do you really not understand this? "

                    Understand what? I understand that some people aren't very clever, I understand that some people trade data for services, I understand a whole bunch of stuff. I think you spilled a little Dunning Kruger down your front.

                    "Or are you a shill for one of said companies?"

                    Another lame ad hominem, jake.

                    Are you a shill for whichever company you bought your laptop from? I mean, you gave them money in exchange for a product. What an idiot! You could have hand-crafted one from the metal you've mined from them thar hills.

                    "We use modern communications, but for the most part most of us see each other face-to-face a couple-four times a month, or more, and that's how we communicate."

                    And via your personal website of course. Don't forget that.

                    As it happens, I'll be back in California tomorrow. It still won't look anything like the bumfuck you pretend it to be. And don't give me some crap about "oh well here in Sonoma ...", because you drove down to Whole Foods the moment you couldn't find any fucking seaweed. You redneck-wannabe hipster douche.

                    1. jake Silver badge

                      @John Dee

                      Paraphrasing the entire thread: The multi-billion-$currency multi-national marketing corporations on the planet are using TehIntraWebTubes[tm] to separate fools from their money faster than The Mob did in the 1920s, or the drug cartels did in the '70s and '80s.

                      My point is that you don't have to buy tulip futures, and if you have a brain you won't.

                      Why are you so afraid of what I have to say?

                      1. Anonymous Coward
                        Anonymous Coward

                        Afraid? No. Oh dear lord, no.

                        "To paraphrase"

                        You're arguing that some people are idiots because they pay for a service that you personally don't see any value in.

                        I feel the same way about people who drive 30 miles to buy seaweed and 45 miles to buy a cold beer. I mean ... why not make your own?

                        Horses for courses.

                        "The [...] multi-national marketing corporations [...] are using [the internet] to separate fools from their money faster than [...] the drug cartels did in the '70s and '80s"

                        That's some shiny fucking hyperbole you got there boy. Care to put it in perspective with some actual costings? Exactly how much money is your average Facebook user handing over? What's the monetary value of "I like cats" to the user, and where could they sell it for cash?

                        "My point is that you don't have to buy tulip futures, and if you have a brain you won't."

                        Great. So ... the speculators, the multi-billion dollars companies ... they're the stupid ones. That's a very different argument.

                        "Why are you so afraid of what I have to say?"

                        Um ... wut? Afraid? So ... I'm stupid, a child, a shill, and now a coward. Any actual arguments behind those insults?

                        1. jake Silver badge

                          Apparently, I've picked up a fanboi.

                          Multi famam, conscientiam pauci verentur.[1]

                          Die dulci fruere.

                          ::plink::

                          [1] Thanks, Pliny. I never thought my Latin classes would come in handy :-)

                          1. Anonymous Coward
                            Anonymous Coward

                            You've tried that one before too.

                            As previously explained, jake, I have what's known as a memory. I use it to store things like previous conversations. It's a requisite part of successful socialising. As also previously explained ... hyperlinks. Using either of the two might stop you from contradicting yourself from one post to the next.

    2. Craigness

      Billing

      Amazon and Ebay manage to bill me without me having to make my government-registered name public. After a 20 year think, Schmidt can't work out how to do it.

  8. Jaymax
    Black Helicopters

    "countries with oppressive attitudes to their citizens or their citizens’ communications"

    Thing is, Mr Schmidt, that includes the US and the UK.

    If you don't believe it, take off your tinted glasses and spend some time on YouTube - you own that now, right? So you could even get one of your lackeys to put a watchlist together for you.

    Sure, it's relative. No one is saying 'The West' is as bad as (for example) Iran.

    And if you don't think it's scary that one company should have access not only to all our habits and interests, in extraordinary detail, but also to our assured legal identities and our social networks, then you are a tool, in multiple senses. I've resigned myself to it now, with G+. I given up that particular fight. That makes me sad - in particular it makes me sad that it should be Google, about the only major tech company I had any respect left for (thank Twitter for keeping the flag of decency aloft), that forced me into defeat.

    But I will still try and keep to the moral high ground; I will still strive to fight for and/or support that which is RIGHT; and so I will still be a thorn in the side of oppression; you're just making it a hell of a lot easier for those with power, an agenda, and perverted morals to monitor, and oppress where 'necessary' voices of dissent.

    I don't know if there's a dedicated fibre running from the Googleplex to the NSA* - maybe there is, maybe there isn't. Is there? Do you know? Are you sure? Can you really be sure?

    Cos I'm sure as damn that there are folks in the intelligence world who would like one.

    1. nyelvmark
      Happy

      @Jaymax

      >>But I will still try and keep to the moral high ground; I will still strive to fight for and/or support that which is RIGHT; and so I will still be a thorn in the side of oppression

      You do know that you're wearing your underpants outside your trousers, right?

  9. bblackmoor

    I'll express myself

    Schmidt wants users to express themselves. I'll express myself, all right. I'll even be using my "real name". But I wont be doing it on Google+, because Google+ hates their users and doesn't care if they are harassed, fired, or arrested by third-world stormtroopers.

  10. alwarming
    Paris Hilton

    Thinking about lack of identification since 1991 ?

    Why, what happened ? I'd wager a bloke posing as a chick on IRC left him high and dry.

    1. Steve Rivers
      Facepalm

      I should have known better...

      ...than to read comments while drinking coffee.

  11. MurrayH
    WTF?

    The most disturbing quote

    "Saying that he’s been thinking about identity for 20 years, Schmidt calls it a “hard problem”: “The Internet would be better if we had an accurate notion that you were a real person”, he says."

    Seriously, he has really been thinking about this for 20 years? and this is what he comes up with? How on earth do these people get anyone to give them money?

    1. Spearchucker Jones
      Boffin

      Even more worrying...

      ...is that in 20 years he's apparently not come across the 7 laws of identity -

      1. User Control and Consent

      2. Minimal Disclosure for a Constrained Use

      3. Justifiable Parties

      4. Directed Identity

      5. Pluralism of Operators and Technologies

      6. Human Integration

      7. Consistent Experience Across Contexts

      http://www.identityblog.com/stories/2004/12/09/thelaws.html

      If he followed those I might actually consider signing up to a (any) Google service.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Luckily..

    ..I already know who I am and therefore have no need of Google's service.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Very well played sir. My hat's off to you.

      Of course, an identity service, or "identity provider" in the lingo, is the first class citizen telling all the second class citizens in the system who the others are. This in and of itself doesn't actually tell you squat, so you need a fourth party (an "attribute provider") to tell you what that identity means. Which in turn means the system is leaking identity information because only that attribute is what matters. Wonderful design innit?

      If dear Schmidt (Page... Shmage. Brin... Shmin. Schmidt.... Shmidt?) had been thinking about an *identity* service instead of a marketing data slurping service, he might've found a way to let yourself tell everyone else who you think you are and let the rest agree or disagree, in a system containing only first class citizens. But of course that's not the sort of thing big corporate bigwigs think about. Would be nice if he'd been honest about that, but well, he wasn't.

      Tangentially, notice how the big deal with the latest root CA ruckus (and the RSA break-in for that matter) is that the damage control hinges on whether you're forthcoming with the information everyone wants to hear and also the way you provide it, as in whether you still seem honest. As such, the transparent lies aren't helping this guy's case.

      On the same note, notice how facebook is slowly pervading as a de-facto "identity service" too, catching on where openid so much did not, and then notice how often they've massively put their foot in it, again. It's probably time their userbase caught up on what's happening and stopped relying on them, especially for third party site logins and such.

      The thing is, Schmidt wants the data facebook is sitting on. Too bad for him he's outperforming a second-hand car salesman in sleazyness. Too bad for everyone else facebook has the bone, as they can't be trusted with it either.

  13. Winkypop Silver badge
    Trollface

    I am not a Google number...

    I am a human being!

    <-- elephant-man like icon

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The 20 year itch to monetize your legal identity

    If he'd been *thinking* about *identity* he'd long ago come to the insight that nyms are not merely nice, but necessary. Dip your smallest toe in psychology and learn that every person has several "natural" identities and (most of us anyway) only one "synthetic", or legal one. Insisting all of the former must fit into the latter is, well, not really thinking about identity. At All.

    But it is clear evidence of him thinking about monetizing, at least as long as it took him to cook up the concept of google+, which doesn't look like it's taken 20 years. Him wanting you to "express yourself" is the lure. Him wanting to drag in your friends and "connect" to them is the glue on the fly paper. Him wanting you to stick to your legal identity is to make sure he's got something worth to sell. It's like facebook, only expressly setup to slurp up your data.

    It's the legal variant on that Italian truck driver swapping tapes with connections at various companies and compiling a huge database searchable on some 37-odd keys full of real people, and monetising that treasure trove to marketeers. Makes sense given that he's an advertiser.

    But it does go to show that this little spider is lying through his teeth trying to spin this positively for you-the-product. In that context, this is indeed a wonderful quote:

    "There, there’s no assumption of privacy, everybody assumes the Internet is bugged and that the secret police are after them."

    Oh, and is that why you're trying to force the issue of real names now? "Don't be evil" indeed. Needless to say I'll sign up and feed it data in just the same way I do with facebook: Not at all by preference, only handing out completely fake data if I must. But Schmidt doesn't like that, for it makes the data so much less valuable.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    There's a saying about...

    Giving them enough rope and they will hang themselves.......

    Roll on the gallows.......

  16. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    ".... we could rank them"

    You're fucking kidding me, right?

    So. Google want to have a ranking system for people.

    Sorry sir you haven’t scored highly enough on the Google Respectomatic™ (which, I assume will be a sort of permanent thumbs up/down on your entire life) to be allowed to shop here, get a job and whatever else small minded bigots want to deny you on the word of some internet trolls.

    This is some of the craziest shit I’ve heard and to think it's from a company that seems to have hugely undue influence with my government makes me shudder.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Social Capital

      Social Capital is an old idea and one we have in an ad hoc form at the moment anyway. It's arguably better than any kind of monetary system of dividing up the pie. But, no, not when google are the hand controlling the knife.

  17. davidsom
    Black Helicopters

    Narrow Escape

    Well I'm glad I never got an invite.... Saves me having to cancel this thing, and knowing it still has my details somewhere.

    It's starting to sound like Google wants to be the unelected government of the internet.

  18. a well wisher

    truth will out

    Out of the mouth of ex CEOs

    "....bill them,...."

    thats the end game

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Well that was easy to figure out

    but it's nice Google's resident evil overlord put it out there so clearly.

    Now if only Eric came clean on how they correlate and store all the other user information... Search queries, Gmail, Android and Chrome IDs, +1 buttons, Analytics, AdSense ads,....

    It's incredibly hard to go anywhere on the Web - or even communicate - without Google tracking you in some way.

    This detailed information, tied to real identities, must be any intelligence agency's wet dream, let alone marketing. So don't worry, even if Google+ fails I'm sure Google will keep trying to there.

    They probably just need to buy one of the credit reporting agencies... hey but we'll get free credit reports right, so it's all fine.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It's not that hard to not be tracked by Google...

      ...block them out. Don't use the search engine (IxQuick HTTPS works just fine); don't allow sites to run javascript on you...and if you do choose to let a specified site to run specified javascript, just make sure it's not Google. Easy. Oh yeah, and no GMail.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The most disturbing thing

    Is that Google is already in a "trusted identity alliance" with Paypal and **Equifax**:

    http://openidentityexchange.org/

    This is already used as a login provider for some US.gov websites.

    So you have the biggest web intelligence company, the largest Internet payment processor, a very big credit reporting company AND the US.gov all aligned to know who you are online.

    Think about it...

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Right had enough....

    .... of this stuff. *Goes to here# and deletes profile (not that it had much anyway)*

    # - http://bit.ly/p4Ysf0

  22. blueprint
    WTF?

    What an evil, creepy company Google is

    The sooner Apple bring out a search engine the better, I'd prefer to have nothing at all to do with a company that's got this mindset.

    1. Dave Murray
      Thumb Down

      Apple Search

      Lol. An Apple search engine would charge you $1.29 for a search, more if it's an image or video search. And, all the result would come from the major movie studios and music labels.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Gimp

        Apple identifier

        Nononono.

        The Apple solution would surely be a sleek hardware key which either sends a unique passcode via a direct connection to your iDevice or displays a one-time passcode when you shake it - in the latter case complete with a companion app for your iPod/Phone/Tab. The actual authentication process would require the user to have an iTunes subscription.

        And they'd call it the iD.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Devil

          Just don't..

          *Don't*

          *Give*

          *Apple*

          *Any*

          *Ideas*

          The last thing anyo0ne needs is for Cupertino to get involved.

    2. nyelvmark
      Go

      Apple search engine

      That would be a cool idea. It could have a feature like Google's "safesearch" which prevented you from seeing any graphics with ugly clashing colours, text with disturbing ideas, or images of people aged 30+.

  23. Rebecca 1

    Forgive me if I'm wrong...

    ...but computers have not yet achieved sentience, so anything written on the web orginated from a real* person. Maybe not someone who Google ranks highly, but I don't really want a large US corporation telling me who to belive.

    Yes, there's a spam problem, but the spammers are real people and will work at gaming the Google+ system anyway.

    * Imaginary people generally strugle to use keyboards.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @Rebecca 1

      The point isn't about whether a real person or not made a post (and don't forget there are a lot of spam bots) so much as whether that real person is who they say they are.

      Take you and I, on El Reg we have generally anonymous names. OK you would be correct in claiming that I am a real person, and as confident as is possible that any posts made here under the "Lee" were made by me*. However that is pretty much all you can be sure of. Lee may be my real name. Or not. You don't know. Even if it is my real name there are probably hundreds of thousands of Lees in the world, so you don't know which one I am. You don't know my age, address, gender, income, spending habits or any of the multitude of things that make me attractive or not to advertisers and service hawkers (Google, basically)

      Now, that often doesn't matter, if I claim that the iPad is the bestest thing since beer** then who cares who I am, even if I were someone famous or a serious tech pundit it is still just an opinion. However if I was on a golfing site giving advice it would make a big difference if I was actually Lee Westwood.

      That, I think is what Google are after - granted they want your info so they can make money, they want to punt adverts and services at the people most likely to pay for using them, but they also have this pipe-dream that if everyone knew who everyone else actually was online then the web would be a better place for users as well, which is a nice, if unworkable and frankly downright stupid, though.

      *Someone else could have access to my account, either allowed or hacked, but you would have pretty much the same likelihood of that happening if I used my real, verifiable, name - arguably I may protect the account more but also you know that a large percentage of famous people's posts would be made by flunkeys and lackeys.

      **you may like sliced bread, I like beer.

      1. jake Silver badge

        @Lee

        Not much between sliced bread & beer, when you think about it.

        Pretty much agree with the rest of your post, though :-)

  24. Paul Shirley
    Unhappy

    Ze Fuhrer einz der Internets

    Ze Fuhrer einz der Internets:“The Internet would be better if we had an accurate notion that you were a real person”, he says.

    A real person, Schmidt says, can be held accountable: “we could check them, we could give them things""

    In what sense is any ID system where *could check* is used worth using? All G+ proves is you're smarter than the bottom percentile at lying to Googles (in)sanity checks. That they won't find out you lied till it's too late. Total waste of time.

    My existing gmail account does prove that at least I had a working cc once upon a time, they charged it for my market account. Which is infinitely more proof than a G+ account gives but still trivially easy to forge.

    So basically they've conjured up an identity scheme with no backing of proof at all, no grounding in real life beyond our voluntarily compliance with the T&Cs and forgot to tell anyone they were signing up for it? What use is that?

    I'm also left wondering what sort of regulatory attention G+ would have attracted if launched as an identity scheme. The yanks would have let them do what they like but many governments would now be forcibly dipping into the data while a few would be standing up for their citizens privacy rights. Luckily 'Ze Fuhrer einz der Internets' couldn't keep his mouth shut while the scheme got entrenched and tipped the world off prematurely.

  25. Justin Clements

    Bit rich

    >>He admits this is a problem in countries with oppressive attitudes to their citizens or their citizens’ communications, but adds that “sensibilities are different”.

    It's a bit rich of him to complain about the oppressive behaviour of other countries, when his own company has an identity rule that is equally oppressive.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Hey Schmidt!

    We tell you what we want, not the other way around! You're not St Jobs!

    We tell you by refusing to use the service. Facebook is evil, but this is even more, especially coming from Google...

    Adios G+!

  27. clanger9
    Stop

    PeopleRank!!

    I can see it now. Schmittchen has this big idea of being able to index and rank people, not just webpages.

    Pseudonyms break this idea, in the same way that PageRank would break if Google couldn't be entirely sure which server the content came from.

    Web server == you

    Content == what you say, do and think

    Hence, pseudonyms are bad. I guess he's been living the Google dream for so long it has become real.

    Absolutely terrifying.

  28. James O'Shea
    Mushroom

    Dear Führer Schimdt

    I have a Gmail account. i use my real name in my Gmail account. I very rarely access that account using a web browser; instead, I use an actual real email client. This is because I hate webmail crap. I do not use my Gmail account for anything important. I've had that account for many years now, and by this time anyone at Google or elsewhere who might have wanted to snoop at what's in my account will be bored to tears. I recently set Ghostery to kill Google Analytics, and (surprise, surprise!) Gmail's webmail crap doesn't work in Firefox anymore. (I get a page begging me to change my privacy settings. Not gonna happen, Führer Schimdt.) I have turned Buzz off. I have set my profile to be private, and made sure that I am 'invisible' (Ha!) and just in case, I put a pic of Charles Babbage in the picture field, and the address field contains 666 Death Star Lane, Mos Eisley, Tatoonie. (according to that profile, I graduated from Evil Empire Sith Academy with a BS in Long Distance Strangling and my hobbies include skinning telemarketers alive. Hmm. There may be a reason why I never got an invite to Google+. Such a pity.) If I must use the Gmail webmail system, I don't use a browser I use for anything else, and I connect using a USB stick which talks to <name of cell phone company redacted> and which gets a different IP each time I fire it up; track that, if you want.

    I expect that one day Führer Schimdt will change the Gmail TOS so that I can't do some or all of the above. That day I stop using Gmail. As I don't use it for anything important, this will not be a loss. I have my very own email server sitting on my very own computer over in one corner. I use my Gmail account as a throw-away for when I want someone to be able to reach me but don't want them to know anything important. Those who actually know me know how to get to my personal server.

    Führer Schimdt can bite me. Exit, stage right, singing Spike Jone's 'Der Führer's Face'. <http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/s/spike_jones/der_fuehrers_face.html>

  29. Tom 38

    He's just trying to compete with Facebook

    Facebook are increasingly trying to market themselves as an Identity Provider, and get lots of websites to offer (in some cases* only offer) Facebook auth. Schmidt sees everything in terms of 1up against rivals, this is just his creepy attempt at this.

    * For instance, if you want to report a bug with Spotify, despite the fact that they already have confirmed account details with you, you have to use a 3rd party bug reporting system, which only offers Facebook auth. Cocks, etc.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Devil

    Got the invite

    My recommendation? Make up as many plausible fake names as possible, invite them all to Google+, have them invite as many others as you can think of, invite your friends to join in the fun making up fake names, pretty soon Kommandante Schmidt will have his own little private universe of 'real' 'verifiable' 'people' that he can invite to his rallies and preach to them whilst the rest of us get on with having fun, untroubled by his lunatic rantings.*

    *Not sure Poland will be safe though.

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