Google has announced that it will begin rolling back its much-hated policies on name and account linking through Google+. Going forward, you will no longer be required to use your Google+ identity for all other websites and services.
The rollback will begin with YouTube, arguably the site where users protested the loudest and were the angriest over the forced integration of G+. Google’s Bradley Horowitz, the VP for streams, photos, and sharing has written a blog post claiming that the move is a response to user feedback. “We’ve also heard that it doesn’t make sense for your Google+ profile to be your identity in all the other Google products you use,” Horowitz said.
The idea that this is some sort of new concept is ludicrous, and Google has only itself to blame for the cataclysmic decline of a once well-received service. The problems began as far back as 2010, when Google introduced a new “Search Plus Your World,” which integrated content from your friends’ streams into your search results. This was an awful idea — when I want to troubleshoot a problem or find good links to studies or journal articles, the last thing I’d want is to be bombarded with data from my family and friends.
The misfires just kept on coming. Google mandated a “real name” policy and initially locked users out of all Google services if it found they hadn’t used one. The company declared that all comments on YouTube would now be sorted by relevance and popularity rather than by upvotes or downvotes on the comments themselves. If you wanted to make YouTube comments, you had to open or use a Google Plus Account. If you tried to opt out of the Google Plus integration on YouTube, meanwhile, the company made it clear that it didn’t respect your decision to do so. The following “OK, we’ll ask you again later” image is what popped up if you chose to continue using your YouTube screen name.
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