14 DAY TRIAL // Several months ago, Google announced that its Profile pages will be going public and that all private profiles will be deleted, come July 31. At the time, it seemed obvious that this had something to do with the social plans the company was working on in secret.
Now that Google+ has been revealed, the strategy is clear. Already, if you have a Google+ account, your old Google Profile page redirects to your Google+ profile.
Also, if you have created a Google+ account, there is no option but to have at least some minimal information made public.
With the old Google Profiles, users could choose to make them completely private, meaning that they were the only ones that could see the information available there.
But, as Google argued, there's not much sense in having a private profile, the whole purpose of the Google Profiles was to have a place where people looking for info about you could find it.
So Google decided to push people to make their profiles public. The only info absolutely required to be public is your name and gender.
"The purpose of Google Profiles is to enable you to manage your online identity. Today, nearly all Google Profiles are public. We believe that using Google Profiles to help people find and connect with you online is how the product is best used," Google explains in a help page.
"If you currently have a private profile but you do not wish to make your profile public, you can delete your profile. Or, you can simply do nothing. All private profiles will be deleted after July 31, 2011," it adds.
As of next month, regardless if you have a Google+ account or not, your Google Profile page will be public or will be removed. That said, Google does offer some effective ways of protecting your privacy. There is the option of keeping both the Google Profile and Google+ profile out of search engines, for example.