[kill9]

You don't seem to appreciate what a major change G+ will be for some of Google's users. I for one would never want the following scenario from the article to happen. Ever.

    "You'll go to search for a camp stove on Google, 
    and you'll find that your friend just bought one, and 
    you'll be able to ask him about it," says Dylan Casey,
    a former Google+ product manager who now works at Path 
    Inc., a smartphone-based social network.

Had I known that Google would one day decide to go social and share my private life, possibly without my consent, then I would have never "gleefully accepted the thousands of dollars worth of free services" in the first place. Fact is that this is a change of direction for Google and people have every right to voice their opinion about it... just like the TOS with Instagram... How is this any different?

[tsycho]

First of all, how credible is a Path PM's opinion on the "camp stove" example? Conflict of interest, anyone? Did Vic G or anyone official at Google say that's going to happen?

IMHO, what's more likely to happen is: You search for a camp stove, and your G+ friend has written a _public_ review of one, and your personalized search results show your friend's review as well. Personally, I would find that quite helpful since I can now contact my friend directly about this, but even if you don't, why not disable personalized results for yourself?

[kill9]

That's a quote from "a former G+ product manager". His credibility is beside the point anyway... this was a hypothetical feature mentioned in the article that conveniently illustrated a potential privacy concern.

(To your prediction of how this feature might play out in reality I would say that you are probably right, but also that I don't give two shits about what my friends buy OR about what they publicly review.)

What we know for certain is that Google is aggressively pushing its users onto G+ and that is the real heart of the problem. It's a bait-and-switch. I have no intention of using Google as a social network and I have no guarantees that I will be able to opt out of current or future features. The writing is on the wall -- Google will be social. That upsets some people.