Google+ has recently launched to rave reviews. One interesting thing about the TOS for Google+is that Google+ requires that real names be used. OK, no big deal. I wasn’t aware this was actually a big problem, but apparently it is for some. My response would be that, if you don’t like Google’s TOS, don’t use Google+. Google owns the site, and they can decide under what terms people can use the site.
That’s just the way things are. Over the past decade or so, the content on the Internet has been increasingly dominated by larger entities. If you’re looking for information on, say, tigers, you’ll probably go to Wikipedia, instead of the homepage of some tiger fanatic or tiger researcher. If you’re looking to connect with people, you might use Facebook or Google+ instead of decentralised newsgroups or mailing lists. You might post on Twitter or Tumblr instead of on your own blog. The people that run these large websites certainly have the right to insist on certain ways of behaving; they have their reputations and profits to protect.
Having said that, I think that there are some advantages in independence or competition on the Internet. Take this blog, for example. This is not a page on Facebook or some large Internet corporation, so I don’t have to adhere to whatever its terms of service are. Obviously, this blog is hosted by an ISP, which certainly has the right to insist on my using my web space in a way that won’t get it into legal troubles, but if they were to impose overly weird terms of service, I would probably host my blog on some other ISP.
Obviously, this model isn’t useful for everything. If you want to keep updated on what’s going on, you probably don’t want to check a thousand different sites for this information. There’s also benefit in standardisation. A social network isn’t very useful if everyone uses a different social network. Hence enormous corporations are required to run these sites.
However, I think it’s useful to keep in mind that not everything may need to be put on mega-sites. I think there’s a place for them (and a very big place at that), but I don’t think they should be the entirety of one’s Internet experience.