Wednesday, November 23, 2011

I deleted my Google G+ Profile

I visited my Google Profile today. It includes G+ posts, and more was public than I'd expected.

There's no longer a way to disable the Posts tab in Google Profile. I recall that was once optional.

I can, however, delete my Profile:

Downgrade from Google+

... Delete Google+ content or your entire Google profile If you delete Google+, Google attempts to restore your experience of other Google products to the way it was before you joined Google+ and to permanently delete your Google+ circles, posts, and comments. If you delete your Google profile, you delete Google+ as well as other services and their data that depend on a Google profile...

I'm going to give this a few days, but I expect I'll delete my TrueName Google Profile. I'll take the opportunity to take another step away from Google 2.0.

It's interesting to reread my first post on my Google Profile in 2007.

Today I have been re-christened 113810027503326386174. It is the ID Google assigned to the persona associated with Gordon's Notes and other blogs. I assume it will be the foundation for Google's future identity management services...

...I will need to add this new number to the page where I park all my public and related personas.

I really didn't expect Google to choose its current path.

In its place, at least for the moment, I have created a John Gordon profile, a companion to my blogs.

Update 12/6/2011: I've deleted my G+ Profile and G+ Content. The dialog I received said ...

Over the next few days, Google will attempt to delete all Google+ features and your Google+ data from your Google Account:

Your circles will be deleted, but people in your circles will remain in your Contacts.

Your +1's will be deleted.

Your posts and comments will be deleted and won't be available to anyone you shared them with.

Any profile information that you did not make public will be deleted.

Many Google+ social and sharing features will be disabled for you on other Google sites.

Content from other services, such as videos, will no longer be visible to people in those circles.

However:

No photos will be deleted: you can still access them in Picasa. To delete them, go to Picasa Web Albums.

Your connections to third-party services will not be affected. To manage them go to Connected accounts settings.

Your chat buddies in Google Talk and Gmail will not be deleted.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"attempts"

No guarantees, and we're not that motivated to make it work correctly, and good luck.

John Gordon said...

Yes, I noticed the "attempts".

Has any company ever turned on its customers so radically? Google acts like a spurned lover, or half of a bitter divorce.

I'm particularly concerned about potential impact on blogger, but the consequences of dropping my G+ profile are only going to get worse. I'm going to try creating various blog backups before I delete.