Google continues to flex muscle to bolster its G+ social network
Posted By RichC on January 3, 2013
I’m not a big social networking guy, but I do send tweets to Twitter, post a newsy story or two to Google+ and send a photo or two to Facebook once a month 
for family (and to a lessor extent use a few other social networks) … but Google is using its behemoth size to muscle users into using G+ by force. They are actually requiring G+ to be connected to users’ accounts. Amir Efrati of the WSJ commented “people who create an account to use Gmail, YouTube and other Google services” are also be “set up with public Google+ pages that can be viewed by anyone online.”
Over the last year I’ve notice and have been concerned over just how “linked” my Google ID has become. I purposely avoid posting every action to social networks, but over time it is becoming challenging to avoid. Android users are faced with even more integration with Google Now as was demonstrated by my daughter’s fiancé this past week. He has been letting Google monitor his calendar, watch his movements and locations (Maps and Lattitude) as well as sift through his gMail account in order to automatically forward alerts to his smartphone. For example, Google noticed he planned to drive from Columbus to Cincinnati and sent him weather updates and traffic alerts. Then proceeded to check his flight out of the Dayton Airport AND sent him his boarding pass … and did the same for his return trip. Whoa there!
As Google Now’s marketing video says, “Google Now is always one step ahead.” Hmm – I’m not sure I’m ready? 
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