[abrahamsen]

This is why Google did the right thing tying their reviews to their social network. If I know the person doing the review, I can put it in context. There are people whose opinion on wireless routers I'd listen to, and people I wouldn't.

A lot of people got angry at the time, and publicly declared they wouldn't review any more. But that's not really a big loss. Their reviews might be the most qualified out there, but as long as they were anonymous I would be unable to put them in context, and they would be of very limited value to me.

[001sky]

This just leads to survivorship bias. Its a shitty hack. A good review systems needs to encourage honesty, not discretion (selective revelation). The substitution of selective revelation for "honesty" is not a more honest or more reliable system. This is a common mistake, and one that marketers like to promote. As it works to their advantage: to manipulate the selection and revelation process, it helps to have a system in place such as the one you describe.

[TrainedMonkey]

I think while that is one benefit of their move, it was not primary purpose. Google is data. They had different users on different services, now they are trying for unified account (Which is probably going to be G+ with everything else attached to it). In essence that is to allow people "convenient" access to all Google services with a single login. However, really it is to tie real people to their services (Easier to sell shit to real people) and to chain them to using Google.

I know there are lots of other reasons, but I believe what I stated above to be main reasons that outline Google's long term strategic plan. Keep driving ad click through rates up by showing more and more custom ads to everyone.

[abrahamsen]

I don't understand a word you are saying.

[001sky]

Aparently.