After July 31, Google will force everyone’s Google Profiles to go public. A message on the Google Profiles page explains:
The purpose of Google Profiles is to enable you to manage your online identity. Today, nearly all Google Profiles are public. We believe that using Google Profiles to help people find and connect with you online is how the product is best used. Private profiles don’t allow this, so we have decided to require all profiles to be public.Keep in mind that your full name and gender are the only required information that will be displayed on your profile; you’ll be able to edit or remove any other information that you don’t want to share.
If you currently have a private profile but you do not wish to make your profile public, you can delete your profile. Or, you can simply do nothing. All private profiles will be deleted after July 31, 2011.
Not exactly something as staggering as the initial Blizzard RealID scandal, considering Google is only forcing a profile name and gender to be public, and technically, nothing is stopping a user from using a fake name. The change has been announced for a while now, but with the release of the Google+, Google is pretty much forcing users to submit to going public, assuming said users want to use a service that is currently garnering the biggest buzz across the Internet. Google+ does, however, allow users to remove their profiles from Google searches, so at least they can somewhat disappear.
(via Search Engine Land)
