Google+

When Google+ first came out a month or so ago, I scored an invite and decided to have a look.  

My reaction: meh.

I mean, I blog.  I tweet.  What use would another app have that was basically just a combination of the two? So I used it all of three or four times.  I quickly added quite a few people to various circles.  But really the only people using it were people I haven't seen in forever talking about things that really have no meaning for me.  And not just their original comments, but all the ongoing conversations they have with their own friends.  Completely boring!  To filter them out I'd have to put them in their own circle, and only read the other circles regularly.  Pointless.

But whatever.

The thing that really turned me off however is their "real name" policy.  Which I simply don't want to use.  I have my online persona thankyouverymuch, I don't need them dictating that I need to use my real name online.  

There were two problems.  
1. I didn't know what other Google services would be affected by me using my real name.  This is not explained anywhere.  Would my YouTube videos suddenly have my real name?  Blogger comments?  Noone could tell me.
2. If they catch you, they don't just suspend your Google+ account - they suspend just about *everything*.  Now you have to understand, I am entirely dependant on my Google services.  I mean just look at the list:

Google services
The biggest things of course being my calendar (I *really* couldn't live without this), Reader (that'd be an epic pain in the butt to switch to something else), Gmail for some mailing lists to make some things easier to manage, Analytics for my blog, Maps for various travel maps I've done, as well as a profile for commenting on people's blogs, chat which is the only chat program left that I use with any sort of regularity, and YouTube which I have a few videos but could live without.  

So you can understand my fear of being suspended.

And then there are stories like this (and other Australians in the past few days as well) and so I decided to delete my Google+ account.  Just like that.  All gone.  Never even miss it.