

All private Google Profiles will be deleted after July 31, 2011 - ern
http://www.google.com/support/profiles/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1192471&p=public_profile

======
_frog
Google seems to be going about creating social products in entirely the wrong
way. They seem to prefer forcing people on to their platforms (see Buzz in
Gmail) rather than making a product that people _actually_ want to use and
spend time on.

~~~
ThomPete
Or integrate it incrementally one step at a time without any disturbance to
those who don't use it.

I never really understood googles approach to these things.

Look at Wave. Why did I need a specific wave mail, why couldn't they just
integrate with my gmail and again those who can use it great, those who can't
no biggie.

So much engineering power yet so little design skills.

------
dstein
I previously never had any desire to create a profile, I didn't see any reason
to. But now I kind of want to create a private profile just to experience
having my digital persona permanently deleted from record and to join the
revolution. Orwell would be proud.

~~~
haribilalic
I don't know about permanently deleted. I'm sure some trace of it will remain
somewhere!

------
stanleydrew
Can anybody who has a private Google profile describe what they use it for and
why?

~~~
Stormbringer
It should be the reverse, private should be the default, and public should be
the eyebrow raising exception.

How nice it is of Google to decide by fiat to impose their standard on
everybody else without consultatin (I know Eric Schmidt is on record as saying
that he doesn't believe in privacy, here we have a prime example).

However, at least they are handling this better than the way Facebook does. If
this was Facebook they would have (a) just done it without giving advance
warning and (b) would have flipped everyone who was private over to public.

At least Google is deleting the accounts rather than outright exposing the
info.

~~~
saurik
I think the argument here is: if you are going to have a private profile, you
may as well simply not have a profile. Like, why did you spend the time to
fill in a bunch of details into Google Profile just to mark it "private"?

~~~
agentultra
Perhaps so you could share it explicitly with people you've vetted and trust
with your information?

~~~
Kylekramer
But there is no mechanism to share it explicitly with people you vetted. This
isn't Facebook, there aren't friends with various levels of permission and a
public version.

You could do that by just showing your screen to your vetted people, though, I
suppose.

~~~
jamesgeck0
(a) There are friends with various levels of permission. Certain fields on the
profile can be set to be visible only to certain groups of contacts.

(b) Upon noting (a), I filled out a private profile in anticipation that
Google would be rolling out further mechanisms to share private profiles with
certain contact groups.

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SkyMarshal
How can you tell if your profile is private? Just checked mine and don't see
anything that distinguishes public from private.

~~~
random42
1\. Copy permalink to profile in clipboard.

2\. Logout from your google account.

3\. Going to google profile permalink, should not show your profile
information.

4\. Login to another google account.

5\. Going to google profile permalink, should not show your profile
information.

~~~
cdr
Or just open a private/anonymous session in another browser window :)

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motters
When you put your information into the cloud terms and conditions apply, and
they can be changed on a whim.

~~~
patrickgzill
Just like the gold and silver bugs say, "if you don't hold it, you don't own
it" ...

~~~
ceejayoz
Ironically, a lot of the gold and silver bugs don't actually hold it.

------
BarkMore
I think that the following can be derived from the plan to delete private
profiles:

\- The upcoming Google social product will be launched in August 2011 or
later.

\- Public profiles are a key element of the new social product.

Google could ask users with private profiles to make them public, but people
will scream about privacy. It's easier to remove the profiles from a PR
perspective.

------
fmavituna
Looks like they learned their lesson from Google Buzz privacy fiasco. Instead
of making them public by default they'll delete it.

------
porkbird
I actually wonder what would happen to a google account without a public
profile linked to a gmail address. IIRC deleting such account is impossible
without deleting a corresponding gmail account. Loosing all your emails one
day just because you are not into google buzz and other fancy social stuff
would be horrible.

~~~
decadentcactus
I'm wondering too. On <https://www.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount> , it
says:

> You don't yet have a public profile. Learn more Create a profile or edit
> your personal info without creating a public profile.

I have no idea if I'm meant to create a public profile to save my email, or if
I already have a private profile, or if I have no profile at all and this
doesn't affect me. Hoping the last one.

~~~
ashcairo
You should be ok. It says that 'Deleting your profile won't delete your Google
Account.' here:
[http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=...](http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=97703&hl=en&ctx=ch_ManageAccount)

~~~
porkbird
As far as I can tell this statement is about a public profile. The private
profile is essentially a google account, and I don't know a way to delete a
google account and keep a gmail address associated with it.

~~~
bpd1069
No, the private profile is essentially a public profile. If you delete a
public/private profile, all access to buzz is gone, and all past 'buzzes' will
not be accessible (effectively deleted).

~~~
porkbird
That's quite confusing. How can I tell that a profile is private vs public
(which seems to be a default)?

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sh4na
That's funny, I'm always trying to create a Google profile but I can't,
because my main account is on appdomains and they don't do profiles for
appdomains. Which means I can't check into places on latitude from my android,
for instance. You'd think they'd be a bit more worried about the potential
user base they're shutting out of their platform, rather than worrying about
deleting private profiles. Oh well.

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elvirs
Okay, this is too much. Forcing people to make their profiles public so that
Google could do their next failing social experiment on the top of them?

Google does not delete the emails I deleted, that's how much storage they've
got, why would they delete my profile? Obviously not a storage issue. I mean
WTF google, seriosly. You are becoming as evil as any other bigco could be.

~~~
DrJokepu
What do you mean? They see private profiles as pointless and made the business
decision to not support this feature in the future.

They're not forcing anyone to have a public profile. You know what Facebook
would have done? They would have simply made all private profiles public
without any previous notification. That would have been evil. Instead, Google
has chosen to follow a path where the default action doesn't compromise
anyone's privacy and they have given ample time for people to decide whether
they want to make their profile public or not.

From what I see, what they've done is pretty much the Right Thing To Do.

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warriors
i dont understand, does this have any impact on gmail account?

~~~
ern
I doubt it, I deleted my profile. My Buzz posts went as well, but my Gmail
remains fine.

