14 DAY TRIAL // The debate over real names in Google+ has been raging every since the service launched. It's a big strange that Google is taking so much heat over the policy when Facebook , and others, have been doing the very same thing for years.
But there's little people can do to change Facebook's mind while Google+ is just starting out. What's more, the early adopter crowd flocked to the site and they are more in tune with internet culture in general.
The internet grew up with pseudonyms, of course, for better and for worse. Plenty of people have defended the use of pseudonyms on Google+, arguing that they're as 'real' as any real name.
But Google has also defended its position, of only allowing "real names" on Google+. It argued that this creates a safe environment and that real names enable people to trust each other more on the site and also to express themselves in a manner more true to their real selves.
Now, former CEO and current Google chairman Eric Schmidt has provided another view, Google+ provides identity and there's no identity without real names.
Answering a question from NPR's Andy Carvin, Schmidt said that Google+ provides identity, first and foremost. If other products and services are going to trust Google+ as an identity provider, the social network needs real data.
If people can't provide their real names, for whatever reason, they can simply not use Google+, was Schmidt's alternative. He also believes that real names are needed so that other users know that the person they're talking to is real.
There are a couple of things to take away from this. One is that Google wants Google+ to be an identity service that other sites and services will use, much like they would use Facebook, Twitter and, to a degree, regular Google accounts.
Of course, that means bundling authentication, logging into a website, with identity, providing data about the user, though the two things can live very well separated.
Another thing that is very clear is that Google doesn't believe identity can exist without real names. This, even as countless people have used pseudonyms and aliases for years, across services, websites or games, and are known in real life by plenty of people after their pseudonyms rather than their actual names.