Broadway - 5:54 pm on Mar 5, 2013 (gmt 0)

>>But he argued that current name policy, which allows for some users to display pseudonyms<<

I could use some help here, I just reviewed Google+ accounts and the use of rel=author tag within the last month. I'm totally unaware of a pseudonym option being allowed.

With their non-pseudonym policy Google is creating two classes of web content generators. Those who participate (because of all of the advantages to search it brings) and those who don't because of privacy issues.

By no means does one of these groups create better web content that the other. This is an issues of simply Google creating things that they can measure, it is not about improving the quality of the web.

(To paraphrase) some years ago Eric Schmitt had some comment attributed to him where jokingly he suggested that possibly when people get to the age of 25 or so they should simply change their names (so to divorce themselves from their previous web histories).

That point just illustrates that Google admits that giving up your privacy on the web is complete, permanent and irreversible. And this is a good thing?

The other issue that's not addressed with a non-pseudonym policy (in regards to the rel=author tag) is the issue of "works for hire."

When a copyright is registered, the publication can be stated to be "a work for hire." That means that the company that paid for the work is (in the eyes of the Copyright Office) the author of the work.

With Google's policy, a company pays to have the work written, is the leagal owner of the content, promotes it via the prominence of their website and yet when the employee quits and and starts to work for a competitor, the juice (of work they don't even own) follows them to their new job, although all of the bills and effort associated with creating the website fell to the company.

If Google was in the business of creating marketable content, they wouldn't stand for that policy for a second.