Google’s force-feeding strategy
For some reason, many people still labor under the misapprehension that Google+ is a social network, rather than seeing it for what it is: Google’s reimagining of the web. Furthermore, there is little discussion over whether Google+ is doing well, badly, or simply okay: it is going to succeed, whatever the cost, because quite simply it is the core of the company’s strategy, and also because the company will do all within its power to make sure that use of it grows.
Make no mistake: the idea of doing well or badly has nothing to do with how you use Google+ as a social network or whatever you might use Facebook for. It is something else.
Like it or not, you are going to end up using Google+. If you are a content provider, you will have to put your content on Google+ if you want it to appear in the search results that go with so-called authorship markup, giving it greater visibility and guarantee it as yours against pages that might reproduce your content.
In other words, your identity is not yours, but now belongs to Google+. If you are a company, you will have to open a Google+ page, allowing Google to insert a highlighted reference to your page in the top right hand corner of the results page when somebody searches for you, in the same way that a carrot is hung from the end of a long stick and dangled in front of your nose.
If you want to comment on YouTube, you will have to do so using your Google+ profile. And if you don’t like it, and you make a video to express your frustration that gets more than a million views, then you will have to stand by and watch as Google makes a lot of money from it. If you have a page of any kind, then you will have to install a +1 toolbar and link it to Google+, because Google has made the number of +1's most important criterion in the new iteration of its search algorithm. If you have a business and want to be on Google Maps or Google Local, guess what: it’s your Google+ page that will be used; and so on and so forth as the strategy unfolds.
If you like Google+, great, use it; you don’t like it: get used to using it. As a means to developing a product, aside from prompting a few clashes with the anti-monopoly people, there is room for discussion. But as a way of rubbing people up the wrong way, it’s sure-fire hit. A week ago, Feedly, which for a long time had used Google OAuth as its authentication system, decided, at Google’s instigation, to make the switch to Google+. The avalanche of complaints from users was such that Feedly backtracked within hours.
Google is now seen as a company that imposes its products, and in so doing generates ill feeling. This has nothing to do with whether Google+ is any good: let’s face it, however good the meal, nobody likes to be force fed…
