Google's defacto "identity system"

Scott Lemon discovers that "Google wants MORE of your identity!":

Well FINALLY, Google adds the ability to annotate and more [on Google Maps] through their new My Maps features ... BUT ... I MUST create an account and be tracked by Google in order to use the features!! What the heck? I can't just hack out a quick annotated map for a friend or family without providing information to Google about who I am and having them permanently note my interest in some specific point on earth?

Once again ... the average person has NO idea they are now going to have even more records kept of every place they have marked or annotated, and when they did it. Google continues to gather even more information about you ... who you are ... what you do ... where you do. Amazing.

I know a number of people who are pretty annoyed that they have to use a gmail email account (which they may not even use regularly for email) to access services such as Blogger and Google Groups. I am one of those people!

With the rapid rise of OpenID as a means of individuals integrating their personae across web service providers, I suspect Google's attempt to lock users into Google's own defacto "identity system" could become a real competitive weakness for them at some point.

Subtle walls

Responding to a post by Google's Matt Cutts on the open aspects of Google's strategy regarding personal information, Nic Carr ponders the subtler aspects of information "lockin":

"As we consolidate more of our personal data into a single company's databases - whether it's Google or another firm - how 'easy' is it, really, to withdraw our information? The answer is: It's not easy at all.

"In a comment on Cutts's post, Philipp Lenssen gets at this issue:

I agree that Google is rather open in these regards and allows you to export a lot. One thing to remember though is that as soon as Google products cross-integrate — e.g. a link from Gmail to add an event to Google Calendar — the costs for users of switching away are increased for any single product. As a practical example, let’s say I love Gmail and I hate Google Calendar, so I want to move to competitor Acme Calendar. Great, you guys offer exporting functionality for my events, so I’ll quickly move them from Acme. But you guys don’t allow me to set my preferred Gmail calendar integration software… so now I end up with a somewhat broken Gmail feature. This is not at all alarming on this scale, but it can be a problem for users down the road when Google heavily increases cross-integration (Google Checkout is being pushed in search result today, for example, cross-integrating another two theoretically 'loosely coupled' services)."

In terms of identity, Google is effectively encouraging me to put together as many fragments as possible of my online personae within the Google walled garden, reassuring me all the while: "look, you're free to take any or all of your personae fragments and skiddaddle any time!" However, what Google are not enabling me to do is to embody my online identity in "small pieces loosely joined", where some of those pieces may be entrusted to Google but others to other service providers. They could, easily, but that would hit profits.

Identity lock-in. MySpace, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google are all at it. The telcos are at it and the retailers are at it. The government are at it. The marketing messages may be changing, but the commercial (and political) realities are still very much entrenched in this Bad Business.