I was all enthusiastic about G+ for about 5 minutes - until they wouldn't allow my wife to sign up without giving them her phone number, and proving that it was hers by accepting a call from them. Just who the fuck do they think they are??
There is no way I could suggest my friends and family sign up to such an intrusive service, so I quickly deleted my own account.
It's an absolutely stunning achievement to create a web-site that's even more offensively intrusive than Facebook. I hope Google are proud.
Amen, google has turned into a genuine identity thieve. a few months ago, i think it was primarily driven by the whole prism thing, i decided to create a bogus google account, using a disposable phone number. Now I have a three google accounts: personal (for email), work (email, google apps, drive, adwords, etc), and my bogus account (a 70+ year old lady using google search, youtube and the rest of the google crapware like google+). this type of business, unilateral decisions are what made microsoft a "hated" company back in the late 90s, early 2000s. google isn't what it used to be, now it's a company packed with great engineers with managers making poor decisions.
Let me see if I understand you: The revelation of the NSA's activities made you fearful and so you decided to make fake Google accounts with fake phone numbers to alleviate those fears. All from the same IP address?
How exactly does this help keep your identity safe? Because they don't have your phone number tied to your account? How many times have you put your phone number in your emails to people? I looked, and over the last year I've sent my number to people over 150 times. I used to have it in my sig. How many people do that?
It seems like you and others are fearful of Google's actions because you are fearful of the government's actions. Remember, Google freaked out about PRISM, and the result was them encrypting traffic between their data centers to PREVENT the government from spying on your data: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/google...
this action doesn't keep me safe, IPs are the same, behaviour is the same, search terms don't change, etc. All i'm saying is that the entire prism story, corporations not making an effort to keep users data safe, constant ad spam because i'm in the "ideal consumer" age range and location, etc, made me rethink how i present myself to google (and other services such as FB). i can only encourage you to simply change you age and relationship status to widowed and you'll see the change.
i'll consider doing that whenever facebook stops showing me sex related ads (condoms, pseudo-dating sites, etc.), bidding/daily discount sites, etc. and no, these ain't retargeting ads. the only decent ads i see are the retargeting ones.
it doesn't matter how many times i "hide this ad > Why did you hide it? > reason x" that it will continue to show me related ads that i have no interest in. "targeted" is one of those over-used buzzwords that i'm still waiting to do what it is supposed to do - i won't hold my breath.
The problem is they effectively know all your accounts are the same. Your IP addresses/ browser / os / screen res etc are pretty much a fingerprint. Let alone any other ml techniques they can apply.
They think they are Google - you know, the guys that made the Internet searchable. I'm pretty sure they know what they are doing.
Call verification is used by many services to establish ownership of an account, and to provide a fallback mechanism that automates the recovery of an account. Google likes to automate the shit out of things. This is no different.
I hear that you are angry about their policies, but I really don't hear why you are angry other than it's 'intrusive'. Are you afraid they are going to do something horrible with your phone number but not your searches? Do you have similar concern and passion for what the NSA has done? Are they related to each other?
> Call verification is used by many services to establish ownership of an account, and to provide a fallback mechanism that automates the recovery of an account. Google likes to automate the shit out of things. This is no different.
I've been using the internet for well over a decade now. The number of services I've signed up for must be in the hundreds.
I've never had to verify my identity unless a monetary transaction has been carried out, and then it's to my bank rather than the merchant.
Nothing I get from Google+ needs any confirmation of my real identity.
I think the problem comes from the fact of treating Google+ like any other social network like Facebook. Google+ is supposed to be an identity layer for all of Google. The fact that they have status update posting, etc is secondary.
Google would like to assign a face, name and phone number to every Google account. And why is that? For various reasons. A face and a name is very valuable for targeted ads. And a phone number associated with every Google account will help Hangouts. Maybe it will enable sending SMS from the web to any phone and also Voice users can cal from the web from their Google account. Thus, Google achieves their aim of disrupting the carriers and making the phone number irrelevant.
Google does not get the credit for making the Internet searchable; there were some pretty decent search engines, like AltaVista, before Google came along. Google made an incremental improvement in search algorithms and figured out how to make search very profitable.
I think you're wrong there. I remember using the web back then. Search sucked before Google. Altavista was a bit better than what came before it, but Google really was the first search engine that was any bloody good at all. The PageRank algorithm basically cracked the search problem.
Making money actually came years later. Google used the method of "get a zillion users and we'll figure out money later."
>Google really was the first search engine that was any bloody good at all.
This is not even vaguely true. Google's algorithm was a bit better, their page was cleaner, and they weren't trying to push you into other services or wall you into any weirdness.
If google had pulled the shit they pull now back then, I never would have switched to it. I switched to google because they convinced me that their simple, honest strategy was based on some sort of a company value rather than just a strategy of leaving profit on the table until they could drive all competition out of business and ask for your firstborn. Corporate values? That's what I get for believing in science fiction.
The algorithm was better, but it wasn't revolutionary. The main point was it specifically ignored the page titles and meta tags that got all the keyword stuffing at the time.
The biggest advantage Google had was their listings were all search results, whereas most competitors had paid listings included in the results, but at the top of course.
If I remember correctly, AltaVista had a pretty sophisticated advanced search mode where you could string together search terms with Boolean operators (and/or/not). And I'm sure that AltaVista had some kind of metric of "site quality" before PageRank came along. For example, you could judge how "important" a site is by how often people click on a search result to go there, or how big they are (number of URLs from that site in your search index). You can also rank the relevance of a search result by how closely the search terms match the text on the site.
Also, as the web and search evolved, people who ran web sites figured out what they'd need to do to get found more easily by search engines. It's possible that the rise of SEO was more responsible for a better search experience than improved site ranking algorithms.
I was also using AltaVista back in early 2000. Their advanced search method you mention is the perfect example of complicated UI that fails to function properly, putting the blame on the user. I switched to Google after being frustrated that I wasn't finding something while at an Internet Cafe, I then saw Google's logo on somebody else's screen and gave it a try. Google was better by an order of magnitude. Your reasoning about SEO is bulshit.
... and now we have completely useless and inaccurate results from google just about every time you search.
There isn't an hour that goes by that I don't search for a few keywords ... like ... freebsd openvpn push ... and guess what ? Results 1 and 3 for that query do not contain the word push.
Every day I am running into this and every day I miss altavista.
I vaguely recall something like a Boolean search functionality on AV, yeah. I think HotBot had one too, though they were using some other sucky algorithmic innovation that didn't actually crack the search problem.
I don't think SEO really started happening until Google outlined the basic idea of PageRank - until there was something to plausibly target. At which point 1999-2000 were the years of hideous link farms. I sure remember those.
No, it was happening way before Google, every page's meta tags would have "anna kournikova nekkid", even if you were selling lawnmowers.
I was an avid user of AltaVista back in the day but what killed it, and why I jumped on Google as soon as it was available was back then, it was simply less polluted.
Setting aside your hysterical NSA invocation. Once I give Google my phone number, it is yet another (and wholly unnecessary) place where I have to keep my phone number updated.
Moreover, in the event that it changes, I have a Google verification problem.
So the fact that I don't trust Google not to leak it somehow is by the by, although that is why I also disabled their "web history" tracking service. No, what really annoys me is that they, and every other service that overcollects, are creating future data management debt for me to deal with. Like I don't have enough already.
I just give them my Google Voice number. Then I don't have an "additional number to track."
Not that phone numbers need to change any more anyway. With universal portability, unless you move outside of the country, you can keep your phone # with you.
Call verification alone is pretty vulnerable. For a social network login, it might be OK. For access to all your information (which is what Google is heading towards, and is already for some people) it's not great. If someone steals your phone number, it's game over. (AFAIK if you verify via phone you can bypass 2FA, right?)
Without a phone number, how are they going to know where you are at all times? Without knowing where you are at all times, how will they give the NSA what they want more than anything?
I know you are probably joking, but the phone number would enable Google to link your Google Plus account to your Android phone (assuming you haven't already logged into Google Plus on your Android device to use the Play Store).
Wait wait wait, so your issue was that she'd have to accept a call? As in, have to talk to someone? As in, perform one of the most basic human interactions that is part of what makes us human? And that offends your senses to the point that you consider it intrusive? How antisocial are you? Who do you think YOU are that you can't have a simple chat with another human being. Are you the king of England? Le Roi? Is Google the proverbial peasant under your patronage and must request an audience with you after many prose describing your illustrious magnanimity ordained by God? Get over yourself.
I don't give my phone number to anybody who doesn't need it. Lots of places ask/demand it, but it's always actually optional. There's no law that says you have to have a phone, after all.
So, there's no way I'm going to give up my phone number in exchange for a log-in on a free web-site.
If I knew your phone number, then I already gave it to Google and linked it to your real name, email, employer and other contact info - just so that my contact books sync between my devices, and your picture shows up next to your name on my phone. Ah, if you hadn't put up your picture, my phone uploaded the picture I had, and linked to your name.
Just so that you know. No need to worry about giving up what's already given up.
That's an interesting point. It's illegal for Google to store my personal data without my consent (I am a EU citizen).
I suppose they can store other people's address books because it's the "legitimate interest of a third party". I'm pretty sure they can't then use that data (my phone number) for any purposes beyond the third party interest - which means they can't use it for advertising, or to link to any user profiles they may have on me. Basically, they can store address book data, but they can't look at it for their own purposes.
That obviously doesn't apply to US persons, who have no data protection right - hence the horror stories of "friend suggestions" that have obviously come through service providers peeking at address books. I wonder how they can practically filter out EU citizens from that - I suppose it's easy to spot an EU phone number.
(Just to head off the inevitable "Google doesn't care about EU law" scoffing... I think you'll find they do. They only get to export Europeans' personal data to the US because they've agreed to uphold the Safe Harbour principles. If they abuse that privilege, they'll have to do a lot of expensive re-engineering.)
Or do you believe when you give your phone number to Google, it's obfuscated, not indexed or searchable, and not permanently associated with you for their current or future use?
Next step - has anyone confirmed your identity yet?
I was unpleasantly surprised to see your post deliberately undoing the GP's attempt to obfuscate his number. Is your goal to bully GP into supporting privacy?
It doesn't matter the technical details of whether the number is easier to search, it's the intent I find disturbing about this.
What supposed intent do you find disturbing? Google wants to associate a credit card number with your login, and getting your phone number is a good way to do it. Someone created a throwaway account on a website, and wrote a post asking for phone numbers. Someone made the mistake of giving hers.
There is no way I could suggest my friends and family sign up to such an intrusive service, so I quickly deleted my own account.
It's an absolutely stunning achievement to create a web-site that's even more offensively intrusive than Facebook. I hope Google are proud.