Pete Cashmore says the fear of losing the identity wars to Facebook is too great for Google to back down.
Google's new social network, Google+, is shaping up to be a hit for the search engine giant.
And yet Google continues to court controversy with its real names policy, which asks users to represent themselves with their real names or risk having their accounts suspended.
Critics say the move is harmful to political activists, victims of harassment and numerous other groups for whom using a real name online might pose a safety risk.
So why is Google being so stubborn about this issue and risking bad PR for the sake of a minor technical change? Why not just allow usernames, as Twitter already does?
'Identity service'
The answer may lie in comments made over the weekend by Google Chairman Eric Schmidt. During an interview in Edinburgh, Scotland, NPR's Andy Carvin asked Schmidt to justify Google's real-names policy.
"He replied by saying that G+ was build (sic) primarily as an identity service, so fundamentally, it depends on people using their real names if they're going to build future products that leverage that information," Carvin explained in a posting to Google+.
"Regarding people who are concerned about their safety, he said G+ is completely optional. No one is forcing you to use it. It's obvious for people at risk if they use their real names, they shouldn't use G+. Regarding countries like Iran and Syria, people there have no expectation of privacy anyway due to their government's own policies, which implies (to me, at least) that Schmidt thinks there's no point of even trying to have a service that allows pseudonyms."
In short: It's all about identity. More to the point: It's all about Facebook.
Facebook's 'online passport'
Facebook is the biggest "identity service" on the Web, and the company is already on track to building what amounts to an "online passport."
This passport is incredibly powerful: Due to Facebook's international nature, it's truly a global ID rather than a national one. And it provides something traditional IDs do not: A network of trusted friends.
It's this system -- Facebook Connect -- that allows any website or application to sign you in instantly without a lengthy sign-up form. Forget passwords. All you need is Facebook. What's more, Facebook's dominance of online identity could give it the lead in numerous industries.
Online advertising? Easy: Facebook's identity system could allow websites to serve you more personalized ads anywhere on the Web, with a high degree of certainty that your profile information is accurate.
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