shazam - 11:59 pm on Aug 31, 2011 (gmt 0)

Nice discussion. It's good to see a bit of honest dialogue without it being squashed by the google folks running/moderating this site. This is a healthy and welcome change.

The intelligence agencies are of course closely involved with google and have been from the beginning. Google is holding/controlling the largest database ever collected in the history of mankind. It's a given that big brother is going to be intimately involved. They have been very clear about the complete disregard of personal privacy for years.

"If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place."

I disagree with the common thought in this thread that google+ is destined to failure. The sad fact is, the sheeple are not very smart and generally operate on autopilot. Groups of people have been shown again and again to make terrible decisions that individuals wouldn't have made.

The other factors are obvious. The day will soon come when the "you don't get your cookie if you don't play by our rules" screws start tightening. Open an adwords/adsense etc.. account without first opening a gmail account for an example. They already have shown they have no moral dilemma with reading our gmails.

The other reason is that they are not going to just give up and walk away like they did with 'wave.' This is too much of a spooks wet dream to control a social network like this. The involvement of intelligence agencies and the large investment show that one way or another the masses will be assimilated.