Why I won't read articles that begin with "Why I"
Why I won't get a Google+ Custom URL
111–120 of 165 posts
Re: Why I won't get a Google+ Custom URL
#112Here's how it works. The techies create something. The legals come along and say, OK, to release that in the wild it needs some T&Cs that cover our arses for everything and then some, because people keep sueing us. In practice, would Google ever dare invoke this on a large scale? No, you know that. Yes, there should be some transparent process that is undertaken if yours were revoked, but Google only like stuff that…
Indeed. A huge corporation would never do anything unethical for money.
It's not about ethics, it would just not make very much sense to charge people for their G+ handle when:
- They struggle to get adoption from users.
- They offer all these other, more essential/complex,
services for 'free'(Gmail/Search/Docs/Calendar/Android).
- Anybody can turn around and use the long form, unless
your G+ is part of your marketing and as such, you use
it as part of a business.
Re: Why I won't get a Google+ Custom URL
#113Wait, people still use Google+?
When did they start?
I follow some tech sources there, mostly related to Android (and therefore, tied into Google's ecosystem anyway), but that's about it.
Re: Why I won't get a Google+ Custom URL
#114They authorized "JayFreemansaurik" and "JaysaurikFreeman" (both of which are highly confusing to even parse) for me, and the form won't even let me try to request "saurik" so I also gave up and am just a number.
FWIW, I was totally OK in a world without usernames. The problem with usernames is that people figure out how to take them from you, and they get burned forever. What happens when we all die? I respected the numbers.
When they added the username mechanism that seemed to be selling out on that wonderful principal. The result also is clearly suboptimal: cocacola has a username, but pepsi is just a number (as their trademark is too short).
Re: Why I won't get a Google+ Custom URL
#115Got the +Custom Url in the end, despite the unchangeability. Does this matter much, if one has their own domain name, anyway ? Btw, the long form url still works
Re: Why I won't get a Google+ Custom URL
#116> A URL is an identifier. I'll use it to identify myself on this service. I'll link to it from my website. I may print it on a business card. Like Google said in their email, I'll use it to "point folks to my profile". But they can take it away for any reason or decide to charge me a (yet unknown) amount of money in the future? No way. I'll stay with my current, unfriendly one, https://plus.google.com/107350252619396782277/
Uh, what makes you think that Google doesn't have the right to take away the numeric URL or charge money for the numeric URL? (Or simply change the URL structure/scheme for Google+ at any point in the future.) Whether you use a numeric URL or personalized URL is irrelevant: Any service/server you don't control can change at any time for any reason. You should always direct people to a domain you own and control, even if all that domain does is auto-redirect to your current Google/Facebook/Github/whatever profile.
Re: Why I won't get a Google+ Custom URL
#117I noticed the same clause in the TOS last week and was taken aback. Ideally I'd love to be able to distribute my Google+ URL with the same confidence as I distribute my email address: namely, if you send a message to this address, you can guarantee that I'm the one who receives it. The fear here is that, should Google start charging for this "service" in the future, and should I decline to play along, someone else co…
Why should Google agree to give away something to you for free forever? They are doing you and the majority of the users (who will never pay for Facebook/Google Plus/Github) a favor by providing the service without charging you a dime. They reserve the right to charge you in the future. If this changes, they will let you know.
I'm perfectly fine with paying for things! In fact, I'm ecstatic at the opportunity to pay for valuable online services. Did you miss the bit of my post where I exhort Google to "make this a paid service up-front"? But what's not cool is offering a means of universal personal identity for free (with the concomitant lock-in this entails), and then sneaking a clause into your TOS revealing your intentions to begin charging for this service at some future date, especially when there is no indication as to what the magnitude of that charge would be! $10 per year? I'd pay that, if my profile was especially important to me. I already pay as much for my personal domain names. $100 per year? Almost certainly not, unless G+ was the world's most important social network. Or maybe it's $X*N per year, where X is the number of unique visits your page gets per year and N is an arbitrary multiplier? We have absolutely no idea! We can't even speculate. It's a black box, a landmine, and it's executed in bad faith by tucking it away where only the most technical of users will ever notice it.
Re: Why I won't get a Google+ Custom URL
#118The reason I won't get a custom URL is because after getting the "Click here to get your custom URL" email, I was informed I had to give them my mobile number before this process was achievable. It seems Google is on an absolute mission to get my mobile number, they've been relentlessly hinting that it's essential that I give it to them for what feels like forever. No Google, you cannot have it. Please, stop asking.
Note that you don't have to give Google your mobile number. You can use a Google Voice number.
Re: Why I won't get a Google+ Custom URL
#119Alright you guys, I'm gonna blow your minds. Try this kind of link: profiles.google.com/[YOUR USER NAME HERE] For example, vrypan's custom link would be: http://profiles.google.com/vrypan
Yea, I remember having my Google Profile back in the day, before + or Buzz.
Re: Why I won't get a Google+ Custom URL
#120facebook - choose whatever username you want
HN - choose whatever username you want
twitter - choose whatever username you want
reddit - choose whatever username you want
tumblr - choose whatever username you want
Google+ - we choose it for you, you can't change it, we might charge you for it, and we might also take it away at some point
also - why does G+ need to insert the /u/0 after the domain name? twitter, facebook and the rest you can simply type domain.com/username but G+ just needs to make it so much less user friendly.