Google shifts stance on Google+ anonymity, will support pseudonyms

Google social vice president Vic Gundotra said Google+ will begin allowing people to use pseudonyms. While the Electronic Frontier Foundation declared victory, after having lobbied against Google’s requirement that people use their real names, Gundotra did not actually say when pseudonym support will be enabled.

Speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit this week, Gundotra said “We plan to support pseudonyms in the future. We’re working on it. It’s coming.” With Google's anti-pseudonym policy, accounts have been blocked with banned users receiving a message stating "After reviewing your profile, we determined that the name you provided violates our Community Standards."

Google has prevented anonymous members because it wanted to create an atmosphere in which it’s easy to find friends by their real names, Gundotra said. If you post a photo on Google+ and users with fake names like “Captain Crunch or Dog Fart comments on it, it changes the atmosphere of the product,” Gundotra said.

“It was largely an issue of developmental priorities. It’s complicated to get this right,” he said. “We want it to be a product where you can discover people you know. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to support other forms of identity. But this is the way we wanted to roll out the service, this is the atmosphere we wanted to set.”

Web 2.0 Summit moderator John Battelle noted that “pseudonyms are extremely important to people Many hackers like to call themselves by their handles and not by their real names.”

Gundotra also said Google Apps account integration with Google+ is coming soon. "That fix is imminent, it's in a matter of days," he said. On the privacy topic, Gundotra promised not to adopt the “frictionless sharing” model that Facebook is driving toward, in which sharing happens by default. “We do not believe in over-sharing,” Gundotra said. “We think curation matters. There is a reason every thought in your head does not come out of your mouth.”