If they had just said that 'Okay, your Google profile is now called Google+, and your YouTube account attached to your Google Profile is now your Google+ profile, and you can go to your settings to complete the migration', it wouldn't have been so bad. What they didn't do is offer anyone any reason to change.

All the benefits they hawked for YouTube's Google+ comment integration were actually such huge drawbacks that many top YouTubers turned off comments entirely. Unsurprisingly, YouTube comments had gone from the mindless, racist, misspelled prattling of the internet's ignorant masses to giant spam-filled, link-filled dumping grounds of (varyingly) penis enlargement spam and giant ASCII dicks, and YouTube comments went from bad to worse, a feat no one thought possible.

It really feels like the decision was made for the YouTube team by someone else (Page? Gundotra?), and the YouTube team just had to roll with it, with their input being ignored and the Google+ team saying 'No it'll be great, don't worry, you'll see, everything is better with Google+!'

To this day, people invite me by gmail address to threads, which I cannot leave unless I tie my Google account to a Google+ account so I can join the thread so I can leave the thread.

The entire thing was a clusterfuck from start to finish, and everything that they wanted out of it could have been accomplished by providing value, rather than extrinsic rationalization.

It nicely solved the annoying google+ problem, with the added benefit that I haven't seen a youtube ad since.

Apparently if you block youtube cookies, the ad server mostly just gives up.

I don't get why you guys fight it so hard. It asked me to enter a name one time. It was clear that it was asking me because it was part of my profile and I had never entered my name on a Google product before. So I entered my name and you know what happened? Nothing. Nothing forever.

Apparently everyone else has been "hassled" endlessly for years to give their name to Google. They already know who you are. You should be appreciative of the transparency. Type in the name. It immediately sorts everything out for you. Google needs to keep moving forward as a company and with their products. They cannot support legacy use cases forever. You need a Google account to use their services. The Google account requires your name, well ok so big deal that isn't a big ask most companies ask for that.

It also publicises your name, which may be a big risk for some people.

Isn't that a bit of a problem whether you are using a alias or not, since a co worker or anyone will eventually come across your alias while doing whatever it is on Docs or Hangouts or similar. Then look you up using that? I use Google apps constantly it seems that would happen quickly.

Is it possible to use Android without a Google+ account?

There is also the issue of (for example) the person with the surname "Yellow Horse" having her account closed down by the policy, as Google didn't believe it was a real name.

So here is the elephant in the room "privacy allegation": if I mess up and make a drunk post on Facebook, I can purge the entire profile and move on. Gmail, however, and a host of associated tools have been critical for my jobs and business for many years. If i make a stupid drunk post on Google+, I don't even want to think how and what parts of my job and business it might affect, so in the foreseeable future I'm staying miles away from anything "social Google".

You'll be losing saved games in Farmville for instance (maybe no big deal to you but still friction for some).

I would lose my Endomono fitness tracking account, that would make me pause.

I'm sure there are many others, just like for Google+.

Really? I don't think so. At the very beginning there were two distinctly separate groups: The geeks, a minority which were eager to jump on the G+ boat -- And the non geeks, which were helplessly oblivious of it, or the advantages were not worth the hassle to them.

It just didn't gain enough momentum, and it was not because of any hate.

Years later though, they began cramming it down people's throats, for example with the annoying pop-ups in Youtube, riddled with dark patterns. Really, don't-be-evil Google? Really?

That's when people started (rightfully) getting pissed off.

You write as if Google+ is past tense. I think you've drunk the Kool-aid that TechCrunch is serving. Disclosure: I'm very, very active on Google+, and so are a lot of my friends. I've been circled by about 10,000 users and have almost 1,500,000 views. Google+ is quite popular with a certain demographic: very technical people, engineers, developers, and programmers. Also Android fans, photographers and artsy people.

I'm sorry you don't like Google+, and it's fine with me that you express a negative opinion about it. But let's stop the silly "Google+ is a ghost town" false rhetoric. It's manifestly, demonstrably untrue, and it doesn't do you any favours when you try to make a case like that. Let it go. Let the people who appreciate Google+ enjoy it. Google+ is still growing by leaps and bounds, and I expect it will continue to do so whether you like it or not.

Saying, "it's not a ghost town [for me]" is no more or less valuable than the opposite experience. I'm glad you're enjoying g+, but that fact doesn't say much about the service.

If we wanted to have a substantive discussion about how well G+ is doing, we'd need to know a lot of specifics about G+ (as well as define what 'well' means in this context). Can 540 million active accounts be a ghost town? Depends on what 'active' and 'ghost town' mean. If we're just going to throw around labels without definitions or data, people just end up supporting the idea that feels right in their gut.

Those are hardly enough to make it viable.

1.500.000 views? There are cat videos that have as many...

What really bothers me is Google trying to force it on people through other Google products.

I read Linus and other personalities on G+, I'm also not implying it's a ghost town.

It just didn't gather enough momentum to attract the mass of "regular" casual users.

It's not that people hate it for the real name thing or whatever. More likely, they hate it because many other's do so why not.