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There's No Avoiding Google+
The Wall Street Journal ^ | January 2, 2013 | AMIR EFRATI

Posted on 01/02/2013 2:39:50 PM PST by MinorityRepublican

Google Inc. GOOG +2.24% is gaining ground against Facebook Inc. FB +5.18% thanks to a controversial tactic: requiring people to use the Google+ social network.

Google over the past year has boosted the Google+ operation by integrating it with the company's top-tier properties, including its Web search engine, Gmail, YouTube, business listings and the Android mobile-operating system.

People using Google to search for photos or customer reviews of a restaurant, for example, automatically are steered to the restaurant's Google+ page. In the fall, Google began requiring people who want to post their reviews of restaurants or other businesses to use their Google+ profiles to do so. The same rule applies for reviews of physical goods or mobile apps obtained through Google.

(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
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1 posted on 01/02/2013 2:39:51 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
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To: MinorityRepublican

What the heck is Google+?


2 posted on 01/02/2013 2:50:16 PM PST by Navy Patriot (Join the Democrats, it's not Fascism when WE do it, and the Constitution and law mean what WE say.)
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To: MinorityRepublican
'S Ok. I'm a lesbian midget of undetermined national origin with a predisposition to look up Nobel laureates in physics.

Got 6.626068 × 10-34 m2 kg / s?

I just tell everyone I'm a cook.

/johnny

3 posted on 01/02/2013 2:50:36 PM PST by JRandomFreeper (Gone Galt)
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To: MinorityRepublican

Google leaders are incredibly smart and innovative. May not like their politics but you cannot deny they are brilliant.


4 posted on 01/02/2013 2:53:50 PM PST by napscoordinator (GOP Candidate 2020 - "Bloomberg 2020 - We vote for whatever crap the GOP puts in front of us.")
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To: MinorityRepublican

Just because my youtube account is now linked to my google+ account doesn’t mean I’m using google+. And they can tell because most of the time I go to youtube it’s to share something to facebook.


5 posted on 01/02/2013 2:57:51 PM PST by discostu (I recommend a fifth of Jack and a bottle of Prozac)
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To: napscoordinator
napscoordinator wrote:
"Google leaders are incredibly smart and innovative. May not like their politics but you cannot deny they are brilliant."
"Brilliant" - I can live with. It's the invasive nature of google products which undermine it's brilliance. I plan to continue avoiding google like the plague.
6 posted on 01/02/2013 2:58:57 PM PST by wtd
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To: MinorityRepublican

It’s really a silly tactic, because they may get people to sign up for an account, but I don’t think there is really any “social networking” going on for most of these accounts, certainly not for mine. I sign in when I am forced to, and sign out as soon as possible. I’ve got no “friends” or “groups” that I have joined, and have no idea how to even see anyone else’s, or even my own profile.

So, it seems to me they are getting people to sign up for a illusory social network that is not actually being used much by anyone. Maybe that will be impressive on paper, but it will likely collapse when people realize there is nothing there.


7 posted on 01/02/2013 3:00:29 PM PST by Boogieman
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To: MinorityRepublican

I just had to deal with this a few days ago. I use Google Picasa which is an extremely convenient photo-editing and online sharing utility. To my great surprise they converted all of my Picasa images to the photo section on a Google+ account and then added my YouTube videos as well. After much research and hassle I figured out the convoluted process to un-Google+ all my stuff, but it was a pain in the neck and I had to figure out how to do it on my own (with the help of a tech blogger article I found.)

I was thinking of setting up a Google+ account recently but not anymore. I refuse to be “herded” into anything like some clueless sheep.


8 posted on 01/02/2013 3:04:34 PM PST by ElkGroveDan (My tagline is in the shop.)
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To: MinorityRepublican

Through a clever combination of ignorance, apathy, and just plain don’t give a rat’s a$$, I manage to avoid both of them.


9 posted on 01/02/2013 3:05:30 PM PST by I cannot think of a name
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To: napscoordinator
Therefore, they join other “brilliant leaders” like: .
10 posted on 01/02/2013 3:10:16 PM PST by SuperLuminal (Where is another agitator for republicanism like Sam Adams when we need him?)
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To: SuperLuminal

Not sure I really get the hatred for Google of this sort. They aren’t a government; they’re a business. They aren’t the beneficiaries of any sort of government-enforced monopoly; they win customers by the quality of their products.

They are a platform that makes possible billions in transactions for all sorts of small businesses that would otherwise not be able to tap into that sort of global consumer market. Ok, their leadership is politically liberal, Democrats, whatever, but that’s a function of the fact that they are Stanford graduates and Palo Alto residents. Being a progressive Democrat is basically a given for that crowd, no matter what line of business they’re in.

But the business itself is pure free market capitalism, and a very innovative and useful one at that. And yes, they do collect tons of information about the activities of their users, but they have no business interest in knowing anyone’s actual personally-identified activities; their interest is in creating statistical aggregations of data that can be used for marketing purposes. And why should I be worried about Google counting my clicks and selling that information to advertisers, when I know that the Federal government is data mining every last bit of data in existence anyways? (And no, I don’t work for or own stock in Google!).


11 posted on 01/02/2013 3:43:22 PM PST by Behind the Blue Wall
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To: Behind the Blue Wall
They are a platform that makes possible billions in transactions for all sorts of small businesses that would otherwise not be able to tap into that sort of global consumer market.

Check into the retention rate for those small businesses. It is abysmal. Business owners get sick of the stacking the deck for larger players and inappropriate ad choices.

12 posted on 01/02/2013 3:50:34 PM PST by steve86 (Acerbic by Nature, not Nurture™)
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To: MinorityRepublican

(Even if you don’t use this information now, save it for when you might need it.)

1) Get several fake identities. Keep good records of the information for later.

http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/

2) Get a throwaway email address with a fake name, from anyone but gmail. Foreign universities are the best. Use them to get another email from someone like Lycos, with a different fake name. They will be your entry to anything Google.

3) If you use Google, periodically delete the Google cookies. You first need to delete your “flash cookies”, which are often used to back up your browser cookies. You do this at the Adobe website:

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html

The picture you see at the top of the screen is not a picture, but a control panel of the flash cookies on your computer. Unless you delete these first, your browser cookies will have their data about you restored when you delete them.

Then you delete your browser cookies as you normally would.

4) Give your fake identity and email a calendar “lifespan”, so that every six months or year, you discontinue using them and begin again with a different fake identity and fake emails.

5) When you just need a quick email for some business that just wants to spam you, use 10 minute email, which will give you a functioning email address for just 10 minutes, that you can renew. This is useful for when they send a confirmation email to that address. It works just like a real email. Then after you let it expire, it’s gone for good. You’re in and registered and they have nothing.

http://10minutemail.com/10MinuteMail/index.html

6) As an additional goodie, try to use the almost maximum allowable number of password characters. Almost nobody uses a 64 character password, which would be extremely hard to even “brute force” break.

http://www.pctools.com/guides/password/


13 posted on 01/02/2013 4:06:17 PM PST by yefragetuwrabrumuy (Best WoT news at rantburg.com)
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To: MinorityRepublican

Bookmark


14 posted on 01/02/2013 4:15:43 PM PST by Pajamajan (Pray for our nation. Thank the Lord for everything you have. Don't wait. Do it today.)
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To: yefragetuwrabrumuy

Thank you for the tutorial, FRiend.

BookMark
Tatt


15 posted on 01/02/2013 4:24:01 PM PST by thesearethetimes... ("Courage, is fear that has said its prayers." Dorothy Bernard)
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To: yefragetuwrabrumuy

I learn something new here every day. I used to delete the flash stuff from the folder on my win7 computer, but now I have a win8, and can’t find that folder.


16 posted on 01/02/2013 4:36:35 PM PST by Excellence (9/11 was an act of faith.)
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To: MinorityRepublican
There's No Avoiding Google+

Sure there is.

IXQUICK blows the doors off the other search engines.

It's simple and fast, and has NO "autocomplete" which is what made me stop using Yahoo search.

17 posted on 01/02/2013 4:46:46 PM PST by ROCKLOBSTER (u)
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To: MinorityRepublican

Forward+ !


18 posted on 01/02/2013 5:03:11 PM PST by rfp1234 (Arguing with a liberal is like playing chess with a pigeon.)
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To: Behind the Blue Wall
Agree with you...mostly...

Guess I should have added that "brilliant marketing strategists" may have been a better term... :-)

19 posted on 01/02/2013 7:46:27 PM PST by SuperLuminal (Where is another agitator for republicanism like Sam Adams when we need him?)
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To: ElkGroveDan

holy cow!!! I am going to take a look at what google+ (have not signed up) wants to do with me via my gmail account


20 posted on 01/04/2013 6:31:05 AM PST by dennisw (The first principle is to find out who you are then you can achieve anything -- Buddhist monk)
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