SocialWil Wheaton Slams Google for Incessantly Pushing Google+

Wil Wheaton Slams Google for Incessantly Pushing Google+

Wil Wheaton may no longer be the “mortal enemy” of fictional character Sheldon Cooper on the CBS TV Show "The Big Bang Theory", but the actor and writer isn’t hiding his contempt for how Google is forcing Google+ down the throats of users.

Wil Wheaton may no longer be the “mortal enemy” of fictional character Sheldon Cooper on the CBS TV Show “The Big Bang Theory”, but the actor and writer isn’t hiding his contempt for how Google is forcing Google+ down the throats of users.

Wheaton penned a post on his WWdN: In Exile blog titled “Google is making a huge and annoying mistake.” He explained that he really does like Google+ (and is on Google+) but hates how they are forcing it on people.

The main reason Wheaton was so upset was due to a new “Like” feature on YouTube that forced users to log in to Google+ to “G+ Like” a video. Turns out, this is a test seen by less than 1 percent of YouTube users, and it looks like this:

youtube-google-plus-like-button-test

Here’s what Wheaton wrote:

“Oh, go f*** yourself, Google. This is just as bad as companies forcing me to “like” something on Facebook before I can view whatever it is they want me to “like.”

Just let me thumbs up something, without forcing me to “upgrade” to G+, you d***heads.

The worst part of this? For a producer like me, I’m going to lose a crapton of potential upvotes for Tabletop, because the core of my audience is tech-savvy and may not want to “upgrade” to yet another f***ing social network they don’t want or need.”

Though I don’t agree with everything Wheaton wrote, he did make a good point later in his post:

“You get people to enthusiastically use services by making them compelling and awesome and easy to use. You don’t get people to enthusiastically use your services by forcing them to. In fact, that’s probably a great way to ensure that a huge number of people who may have been interested in trying out your service never even look at it.”

It’s true, Google has been forcing users to convert over to Google+ and other services for some time as Google+ is baked into the entire Google experience. For instance, now when you sign up for a Gmail, YouTube, or Blogger account you are forced to sign up for a Google+ account.

I really can’t complain too much about Google, considering all the free services that they provide. However, I don’t like being forced to sign up for certain services, even if they are free. If there was only a happy medium where everyone could be happy.

Do you think Wheaton is right? Is Google forcing the issue with Google+?

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