Google+: I give it a C+

Alas, readers, I do apologize for my lack of posts for... months.  I guess when life gets in the way, the blog is the first thing I neglect.  But rest assured, I always have thoughts rolling around in my head, so hopefully I'll keep this going at some level!

What brings me here today is to discuss Google+, Google's latest attempt at a social network.  Google has tried getting into social networking several times, but never really stood a shot at making a mark in the social universe.  This time, they've gotten enough buzz and enough interest that they may have a shot.  Or, enough people are getting frustrated with Facebook that they're interested in shopping around.  Either way, Google needs to watch the success of the Google+ beta launch very carefully.

I was lucky enough to be granted an invitation to use Google+, so I've been spending some time playing with it.  What many people mention in their reviews are Google+'s Circles, which allow you to partition all of your contacts into groups like friends, family, acquaintances, co-workers, etc., and you can decide which circles can see each bit of information that you share.  This is exactly like Facebook's "lists," allowing you to make lists of your friends, and use the same lists for manipulating your privacy settings.  The only difference is that Google+ makes its circles central to its interface, making it very easy for the casual social networker to figure them out.  As for me, I've already mastered doing this on Facebook, so it wasn't all that compelling to me.

Other than that, Google+ is very simple yet powerful, much like what you would expect from Google.  So far it's not overrun with advertising (yet... this is Google, after all).  I appreciate that it doesn't sign me into chat automatically (which is one thing that annoys me about Facebook, although I think the problem is mostly with the FB mobile app).  There isn't a company presence or some of the other things Facebook has like groups (...yet.  Again, this is probably just because it's in beta).  But "Sparks" is an interesting way to find content based on your interest, so there is potential to build on this to make it even more compelling.

What I haven't yet seen in any published Google+ reviews is a major issue that I uncovered and makes me very uncomfortable with Google+... as well as everything else Google offers.  The problem is that Google is a major enterprise with many offerings--Gmail, Blogger (like what you're reading right at this moment), Buzz, Google+, Documents, Calendar, etc.  What became apparent to me once I started using Google+ (and I kind of feel dumb for not noticing this before) is how interconnected all these things are, and in a scary way.  Example #1:  I have two blogs, one professional (what you're reading), and one personal.  I would like to have different profiles for the two blogs simply because I would like to share different information in each of these outlets.  But Google only allows you to have one profile, and because both of these blogs are in Blogger (a Google entity), it goes back to the same profile.  Now that Google+ exists, the profile that it takes you to is my Google+ profile.  I don't like that.  Example #2:  Once I signed up for Google+, since I used my Gmail address to log in, Google+ automatically populated my profile with everything I've ever entered in Google Buzz (through Gmail).  I had no choice in that--what if I didn't want to connect those two things?

While in some ways, it might be convenient to have a lot of entities under one umbrella (and would make sharing things like videos and documents on Google+ very easy and seamless), I see this as a major problem of privacy.  I'm not giving up yet, though, since this is still only a beta version and Google still has a chance to fix this and add in some layers of privacy settings.  But I will say that if this isn't fixed, I may not just quit Google+, but I might consider quitting some of Google's other offerings, too.

Get it right, Google.  If you were to have a chance at competing with Facebook, it would be winning in what frustrates people the most about Facebook:  privacy.  This is your shot.