Yeah ... speaking of "social spam" does anyone else get a "make new friends on Google+" page about 10% of the times you try to go to plus.google.com ? The persistent annoyance of that page was a major reason I went back to Facebook from G+, and now just use it as a Skype replacement.

They ask me to upload a photo of myself 100% of the time I visit the front page of google+. I actively avoid it now.

I honestly thought from the title that the post would be a mea culpa for just that.

More than 10% of the time on facebook, I get a "try out these new games your friends are playing" (even though I've rarely played games on facebook), which takes up roughly the same amount of space as the google+ one does.

What are you talking about?

You've clearly never seen the google ones.

It's a GIGANTIC POPUP full of Click here! Join now! Follow ME! (Or like today, a new full page of Do Not Want: "Never miss another post Get notifications whenever important people in your life share something new on Google+" <-- how about you just let me into the site ok? Come on...)

Facebook is spammy, but G+ is just beyond a joke.

This G+ one fills the entire screen, and you have to find and click the "no thank you get out of my face please" button to get to the social feed; if you want to check that multiple times a day (like is typical Facebook usage), it gets to be a major source of friction, which Google usually hacks out with an axe anywhere they possibly can ...

I find it annoying that I can't even browse someone else's G+ page when logged in; I have to log out first.

I got that so often I wrote a Greasemonkey script to retry the URL if I got that page.

Everything they do lately seems designed to trick you into doing something, signing for a Google service, joining G+, clicking an ad by mistake, downloading Chrome ...

What the hell happened to the Google we knew?

Quarterly earnings reports

>What the hell happened to the Google we knew?

It never existed, and people were pointing that out this whole time.

YouTube has asked me over and over for the past year to use my real name on YouTube.

NOPE NOPE NOPE.

I got this gem after refusing again today:

http://imgur.com/heHWkzG

What the hell. "Are you sure?" Well, yes I am. None of buttons answer that question.

I just wanted to watch the damn video link someone sent me. Jesus. I'll be sure to logout next time.

That's not actually a bad thing, YouTube comments are very bad and anything they can do to improve that is OK, including requiring a real name.

That's fine except I wasn't trying to comment. I was just trying to view some trivial video shared by a family member.

Instead I was assaulted with this UI atrocity forcing me to evaluate some complicated modal dialog before I could even view the damn video. I mean, look at it: it's a pretty clear yes/no question with three confusing answer buttons and none of the labels answer the question posed at the top.

I could tolerate it if it happened when I tried to upload, comment, like, report or favorite something, but just to watch? If I had been logged out I wouldn't have been hassled by this. Apparently my sin is having bothered to create an account at some point in the past when I just wanted to click the like button as feedback to some poster. Why is it so unreasonable to like things without endorsing them? I guess the answer it to delete my youtube account and lurk moar. Fine. This is exactly what wil warned about.

Sadly youtube is now entrenched. Everybody else is a fringe player.

Whatever happened to freedom of speech. This is exactly what autocrats everywhere want and even we now believe it to be good - just because of youtube comments. Comments which reflect the real us. With a real name policy it will be replaced by a few polite lines with emoticons.

Freedom of speech seems to be very important to you but you do not seem to understand it well. YouTube is not a product of the government.

Then require a real name rather than these passive aggressive, evermore-obscure by turns, login modals.

Welcome to the new google, just like th.... no wait. Completeley different from the old[1] google.

[1] "Since the beginning, we’ve focused on providing the best user experience possible. Whether we’re designing a new Internet browser or a new tweak to the look of the homepage, we take great care to ensure that they will ultimately serve you, rather than our own internal goal or bottom line."

http://www.google.com/about/company/philosophy/

(they really should change the language in that page now)

If you've ever visited YouTube with Google cookies present in your browser, they're linked together. Youtube already knows your real name (or whatever name is in your Google account, anyway).

Wasn't that the pitch for Google+? :P

What's hilarious about it? Getting random invites to games and other events because of broken or non-obvious filters is a huge problem on other social networking sites. And Facebook groups have always been a second seat to just sharing with everyone. It actually gets me in trouble a lot since I like to post about tech stuff but have many friends who aren't familiar and don't care about that stuff.