Gundotra And Brin Promise Google+ Pseudonyms

Facebook enables “oversharing”

Initially, he said Google+ appears to be matching some of what Facebook is doing. But in the future, users will go to Google Search, see notifications on the home screen and learn that some long lost friends are available to connect with. “We are in an enviable position,” Gundotra said. “We have the users that come to Google that give us the time to build that graph.”

However, that graph will be carefully curated, said Gundotra, who alluded to the fact that Facebook enables oversharing. “There’s a reason why every thought in your head doesn’t come out of your mouth,” Gundotra said, drawing applause from the cloud.

For example, he noted that he is embarrassed that he likes a Britney Spears song and wants everyone to know that he likes U2. This was a thinly veiled shot at Facebook’s Social Apps, which publish users’ “stories”, or what music they listened to, on Spotify as part of the new Timeline product.

Pseudonyms

In the course of stressing privacy, Battelle asked Gundotra about the “real names debate,” in which Google has aggressively disallowed pseudonyms on Google+ and has suspended the accounts of users who don’t use their real names – thereby also ejecting business pages.

Gundotra said Google will support pseudonyms in the future, but declined to say when. He explained that it was largely an issue of development priorities and is complicated to get right, noting that Google wanted to make sure it set the right “atmosphere” or tone for the service.

Gundotra later knocked the Facebook platform in response to a question about the Google+ API, whose piecemeal rollout continues to irk many developers.

He said Google would be cautious and not release APIs, allow developers to build applications with them, and then revoke those apps. He cited Android and Chrome as examples of how Google carefully curates APIs.

Over time, Google’s properties will be carefully and completely woven into the Google+ fabric. That will include Google Apps getting Google+ functionality in days, with Google+ brand pages coming in the future.

“By Christmas, you’ll start to see it all come together,” Gundotra added later during the Q&A session.