Google finally admits it wants to OWN YOU

Mountain View's Chocolate Factory is putting its vast userbase on notice of major changes to its privacy policies.

Come 1 March the 350 million people worldwide who have Gmail accounts, for example, will no longer be able to use that service in isolation of other Google products they browse to online.

That's because the company's Terms of Service are changing.

Some will argue that Google is merely doing some neat housekeeping by cutting and shutting the majority of its 70 privacy policies into one clean explanation of what will happen with the information users input into the company's array of products.

Others might note that these privacy tweaks are coming ahead of any public antitrust battle Google potentially faces on both sides of the Atlantic where formal regulatory probes of the world's largest ad broker are already well underway.

"The main change is for users with Google Accounts," Google's privacy, product and engineering wonk Alma Whitten said.

"Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you've provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience."

The reality is that Larry Page's second shot at being in charge of Google has been defined by axing lumpen products and streamlining the search giant's business into a destination rather than an online station through which users travel to find stuff on the web.

In fact, that process had arguably been in play long before Page returned to the CEO seat. But since his comeback as Google's boss, that strategy – in tandem with regulatory pressure being heaped on the firm – has accelerated.

Some news outlets have pointed at an interview Page did with everyone's favourite smut ragPlayboy back in 2004, when his outlook on what Google as a business represented to the online world was very different indeed.

Here's the full excerpt, via Business Insider:

PLAYBOY: With the addition of email, Froogle — your new shopping site — and Google news, plus your search engine, will Google become a portal similar to Yahoo, AOL or MSN? Many Internet companies were founded as portals. It was assumed that the more services you provided, the longer people would stay on your website and the more revenue you could generate from advertising and pay services.

PAGE: We built a business on the opposite message. We want you to come to Google and quickly find what you want. Then we’re happy to send you to the other sites. In fact, that’s the point. The portal strategy tries to own all of the information.

PLAYBOY: Portals attempt to create what they call sticky content to keep a user as long as possible.

PAGE: That’s the problem. Most portals show their own content above content elsewhere on the web. We feel that’s a conflict of interest, analogous to taking money for search results. Their search engine doesn’t necessarily provide the best results; it provides the portal’s results. Google conscientiously tries to stay away from that. We want to get you out of Google and to the right place as fast as possible. It’s a very different model.

PLAYBOY: Until you launched news, Gmail, Froogle and similar services.

PAGE: These are just other technologies to help you use the web. They’re an alternative, hopefully a good one. But we continue to point users to the best websites and try to do whatever is in their best interest. With news, we’re not buying information and then pointing users to information we own. We collect many news sources, list them and point the user to other websites. Gmail is just a good mail program with lots of storage.

Cut to March 2012, and the state of play is very different indeed for Larry. Of course it's a CEO's prerogative to change his mind, and that's especially true if an upstart like Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook is suddenly the second-most popular online destination on the internet.

Google is expected to do a mass mail-out to all its users notifying them of the imminent changes to its Terms of Service. The company is also pointing anyone who visits its search homepage to a link detailing how its privacy policies will be tweaked.

In a nutshell, the company reckons that these changes to its services will offer its users "better search results".

That's an important statement. Google is reasserting that ALL of its products relate back to its search estate. In other words, Page's crew are insisting that the company only really offers one service online.

The question has to be: could this strategy of effectively turning Google into a destination, rather than simply a stop-off point – Mountain View prefers to call itself a "platform" these days – appease regulators, or is the anti-competitive damage already done?

Apple has another blow-out quarter

Red-hot iPhone and iPad sales helped Apple (AAPL) supercharge its first earnings report of 2012 with a breathtaking 118-percent jump in profit, leaving the tech giant with nearly $100 billion in cash and strong momentum on the increasingly crowded digital playing field.

The Cupertino company on Tuesday reported profits of $13.06 billion, or $13.87 per diluted share, for its first fiscal quarter, which ended Dec. 24. Revenues soared to $46.3 billion, up from $26.7 billion for the same quarter a year ago, putting Apple on course to become the world's largest technology company in terms of revenue.

"This is more than spectacular," said analyst Tim Bajarin with Creative Strategies. "They had a record-setting blowout quarter with incremental upgrades to the iPhone and the Mac. Imagine what 2012 will be like with a new version of the iPhone, the iPad and maybe even an all-new Mac."

In a clear sign that Apple, at least for now, is doing remarkably well without co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs, the numbers blew past Wall Street's projections. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to earn $10.07 a share on sales of $38.76 billion in the first full quarter under CEO Tim Cook's stewardship.

"We're thrilled with our

outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs," said Apple CEO Tim Cook, who took over from an ailing Steve Jobs last August just weeks before Jobs died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. "Apple's momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline."

Once again, the iPhone was the star of the show, driving Apple revenue to an all-time high even though the iPhone 4S, introduced at the start of the quarter, was initially criticized for being too similar to its predecessor. The public obviously disagreed, buying more than 37 million iPhones during the quarter, up 128 percent from the same quarter a year earlier.

The iPad played a strong supporting role, with Apple selling 15.43 million, a jump of 111 percent from the same period last year. Apple also sold 5.2 million Mac computers in the quarter, a 26-percent increase.

Apple said its gross margin was 44.7 percent, compared to 38.5 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 58 percent of the quarter's revenue.

Even as some analysts have begun to question whether Apple can continue to strut its spectacular bottom line with ever-increasing revenue and profit, the company sailed into the new calendar year cash-flush and even-keeled with the seemingly steady hand of Cook at the helm. Meanwhile, excitement continues to build over rumored releases of a new iPhone, iPad and possibly an improved Apple TV.

Apple had $127.8 billion in sales during the 2011 calendar year, putting it neck-and-neck with Hewlett-Packard(HPQ), the nation's largest tech company in terms of sales. For its fiscal year ended Oct. 31, HP had sales of $127.2 billion.

The big numbers also raise the possibility that Apple, just as it did temporarily last April, could once again overtake Exxon Mobile as the world's most valuable company. That could happen as early as Wednesday morning if Apple stock opens anywhere near the $454 it hit in after-hours trading, giving it a market cap of more than $423 billion, topping Exxon Mobil's $417 billion.

Many analysts think Apple will continue to astonish the world with its performance in coming years.

"This is just a stepping point for it to go another 15 to 20 percent higher than it is now," said Michael Yoshikami, CEO of YCMNET Advisors, which owns Apple shares, adding that international expansion will drive much of the upside. "The stock is cheap relative to companies like Google (GOOG). It's a good value, especially considering what a growth trajectory this company is on."

Analyst Avi Greengart with Current Analysis said that the coming year could be a momentous one for Apple, widely expected to release newer and flashier versions of both the iPhone and iPad. But the elephant in the room continues to be the company's rumored advances with its Apple TV, key to helping it establish a dominating presence in the digital living room of the future.

"There's no question we're seeing a convergence of mobile systems with the digital living room and that remains Apple's weakest point,'' said Greengart. "I'm expecting Apple to press on in the TV business in some way, shape or form, but it still isn't clear what they might come up with.''

On the after-earnings conference call with analysts, Apple's cash holdings became the subject of some tantalizing comments by the company's executives, who raised the possibility of Apple making some earth-shaking acquisitions in the coming months.

"We are actively discussing uses of our cash balance and don't have anything specific to announce today," Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer told the analysts. "In the meantime, we continue to be very disciplined with the cash and are not letting it burn a hole in our pocket."

iPhone vs. Android a tight race but iPad puts iOS 'way ahead' in mobile OS war

Apple CEO Tim Cook outlined his thoughts on the company's iOS device performance during Q1 2012 and sees iPhone sales momentum closing the gap with rival handsets running Google's Android platform, while iPad and iPod touch are in a league of their own.

During Apple's Q1 2012 earnings conference call on Tuesday, Cook made it clear that he believes iOS is a key component to the company's future, saying that the success of the iPhone 4S and iPad is indicative of a slow move away from the desktop PC.

When asked if iOS versus Android was becoming a two-horse race similar to the Mac and Windows rivalry, Cook explained that the mobile device market is much more nuanced and is a very important facet to Apple's sustainability.

"The Mac has outgrown the market for over 20 quarters in a row, but still has a single digit percentage of the worldwide market," Cook said. "iOS, you look at phones, tablets, the iPod touch, we've sold over 350 million iOS devices. Over 62 million of those were done in the last quarter alone."

In looking at recent data from analytics firms, the iPhone has been showing steady growth when compared to Android handsets. Despite a shortage of supply, Apple managed to move 37 million iPhones last quarter.

For the Oct./Nov. period in the U.S., which accounts for only a portion of iPhone 4S sales, NPD saw Apple's smartphone holding a 43% market share while Android had 47%. A following report from Nielsen, which adds in month of Decemberm shows iPhone market share slowly increasing to 45% while Android holds steady at 47%.

"It seems like all of the data that I've seen in the U.S. would say that it's a very close race in iPhone [and Android]," Cook notes. "I wouldn't say it's a two-horse race, there's a horse in Redmond that always suits up and always runs and will keep running, and there's other players that we can never count out."

Cook said that Apple will somewhat ignore how many "horses" there are in the crowded mobile marketplace and focus on innovating to "make sure [it's] the lead one."

Apple CEO Tim Cook at the iPhone 4S launch event in October | Source: Reuters

In looking to the future of iOS products, Cook commented that tablets like the iPad will one day surpass the PC market, and sees Apple's offering as being peerless among a litany of models running on Android, Windows and other platforms.

Citing recent IDC data that shows desktop sales in the U.S. were trumped by tablet sales during the last quarter of 2011, Cook claims that there are different indicators for significant momentum in the space.

"We're really happy with the 15.4 million iPads that we were able to sell," Cook said. "This is consistent with our long-term belief that we've had since before we introduced the product that this is a huge opportunity for Apple over time."

The Apple chief doesn't see other tablets like Amazon's Kindle Fire or similar Android models as threats to the iPad's crown. Cook notes that consumers want to use their tablets in a variety of ways and the "limited function" tablets and e-readers simply don't have Apple's robust ecosystem of over 170,000 iPad-optimized apps.

"I think on the iPad side, although I don't have specific numbers to share from third parties, I think that all of us inherently believe that iPad is way ahead there," Cook said, adding that "there's really no comparable product to iPod touch out there, so iOS is doing extremely well. What we focus on is innovating and making the world's best product."

Google overhauls its privacy policies

Google (GOOG) on Tuesday said it would consolidate and simplify its large litter of privacy policies into a single umbrella statement, reflecting the company's plan to increasingly meld what were once separate services into a single experience.

But while the Internet giant is following a course recommended by many privacy advocates, it's unclear whether the new effort will find broad support among privacy advocates.

Google said it would consolidate more than 60 separate privacy policies into one, describing how Google collects and uses data from and about its hundreds of millions of users. The change cuts by more than 80 percent the number of words consumers will have to read. The company plans to put its new privacy policy into effect March 1.

Privacy groups have long called for Internet companies like Google andFacebook to rewrite their privacy policies in plain English and shorten them as much as possible to help consumers make choices. But privacy advocates may not rush to embrace the new Google privacy effort, if their response to Google's recent privacy education campaign is any indication.

Part of the issue, advocates say, is whether more user-friendly language gives consumers the detailed information they might need

to decide whether they are comfortable with a particular online service.

The move reflects the fact that important Google services such as search, Gmail, and the Google+ social network are increasingly joined. A Google customer who uses both Gmail and Google+, for example, now sees information about their Google+ connections in their Gmail contacts. And Google recently launched a new search feature that promotes content from Google+ and its Picasa photo-sharing service in search results.

At about 2,200 words, the new privacy policy is slightly longer than Google's existing main privacy policy, but the company says a consumer who uses many of the most popular Google services would have to read more than 68,000 words to digest all the specific policies that cover those key services.

"Our new policy reflects our desire to create a simple product experience that does what you need, when you want it to," Google said in an announcement posted on its website Tuesday afternoon.

Google also recently launched a new education campaign about privacy dubbed "Good to Know" in newspapers and magazines across the country, and links to the "Good to Know" website are featured on the company's new privacy page.

But the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center plans Wednesday to launch an alternative campaign called "Good to Really Know," which will talk about how software "cookies" are used to target advertising to consumers, as well as other privacy issues that Google mentioned but did not prominently feature in its advertising campaign.

"What they say on their 'Good to Know' website is really not helpful to users, and we think users should know that," Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said Tuesday. "It puts the responsibility for privacy back on the users, when it's Google and others that should be doing more to safeguard online privacy."

The Federal Trade Commission, which recently finalized a consent decree that requires Google to submit to 20 years of independent privacy audits, did not respond to a request for comment about the company's new privacy policy.

There will still be a handful of Google services that have their own separate privacy policies, such as for its Chrome browser and Wallet payments service, because those services either have different functionality or require different disclosures under the law

iPhone 4S To Supercharge Apple's Holiday Quarter

Expect an earnings blowout for Tim Cook’s first full quarter as Apple’s Chief Executive when Apple posts its results for the holiday quarter Tuesday afternoon.

Apple shares dipped last October after the Cupertino, Calif.-based Mac maker missed earnings expectations as sales of Apple’s aging iPhone 3GS sagged.

Tim Cook

This time, Apple entered the holiday quarter with a new handset to complement a slate of strong-selling products, including the MacBook Air and the iPad 2.

Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expect Apple to post an earnings jump of 58% over the-year ago quarter.

Net income is expected to rise to $9.6 billion, or $10.08 per share, on sales of $38.9 billion, compared to net income of $6.0 billion, or $6.43 per share, on sales of $26.7 billion during the year-ago quarter.

Analysts expect Apple will report gross margins of 40.8%, up from 38.5% during the year-ago quarter.

If anything, however, consensus estimates understate expectations, points out blogger Philip Elmer-DeWitt, since the estimates reported by Thomson and others include projections that have not been updated in months.

In a note to investors last week, Jeffries & Company analyst Peter Misek penciled in iPhone sales of 33 million units, iPad sales of more than 14 million, Mac sales of 5.6 million units, and iPod sales of 12.9 million units for the quarter ending in December.

For the current quarter, analysts expect Apple will report net income of $7.5 billion on sales of $32.0 billion for the quarter ending in March.

Apple shares have risen more than 30% to 427.41 from $337.45 over the past year. They’re up 5.53% so far this year.

Google+ names policy goes just far enough

There are lots of places where you can be anonymous online. Google+ isn't one of them. Late today, Google announced a revision to the G+ names policy that doesn't change this, but it does allow people to use nicknames and established pseudonyms. If anonymity is your thing, go somewhere else. I don't want you on Google+. You can bully pulpit somewhere else. As for those folks whose lives might be at risk for using real names, please be safe someplace else -- Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Tumblr or WordPress, for example. Those services have proven they can protect your identity.

But, of course, the griping will continue from the Internet rabble determined to hide their identities everywhere. They want more from Google than just nicknames. What are you afraid of? I use my real name everywhere, as I have always done. I see that as being in the very spirit of the open -- and transparent -- Internet. Be who you are, not someone else. And if that comment --- or other online interaction -- requires you to hide your identity, shut the frak up. Vent somewhere else. For everyone else, and this includes people who have built up alternative identities, Google+ welcomes you.

Bradley Horowitz, Google vice president, Plused the changes: "Starting today we’re updating our policies and processes to broaden support for established pseudonyms, from +trench coat to +Madonna".

Pseudonymity isn't anonymity. A pseudonym is another form of identity, just not one using your real name. Google embraces the one by, so far, resisting the other. Horowitz writes:

Over the next week, we’ll be adding support for alternate names – be they nicknames, maiden names, or names in another script -- alongside your common name. This name will show up on your Google+ profile and in the hovercards which appear over your name. In the next few weeks, we’ll be displaying it more broadly as part of your name in other areas of Google+ as well. So if you’re Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Jane Doe (Smith), or सौरभ शर्मा (Saurabh Sharma), you can now communicate your identity the way you want to.

Key verbiage: "alongside your common name". He continues: "To add an alternate name, go to your Google+ profile, click Edit Profile, select your name and click on 'More options'...It’s important to remember that when you change your name in Google+, you’re changing it across all services that require a Google Profile".

Google's name policy is here.

Anonymity is Bad Policy

I applaud today's changes for sticking to real identities, while letting people have established nicknames or pseudonyms as personal brands. Anonymity is bad policy and one Google should vehemently resist. Some reasons:

1. Security. Google has plenty of bad experiences with anonymous accounts. Cybercriminals have long used anonymous Blogger accounts as part of phishing nets. Google+ could be similarly used and perhaps be more dangerous because of its design. People follow you to start with -- they're not approved as friends first. Twitter is lesson there -- where spammers use the service by following people and tweeting offers or even links to phishing or malware sites.

If for no other reason than preventing Google+ from becoming a platform for cybercriminals, there should be no anonymous users on the service.

2. Community. Google+ is clearly designed to be a better social network, one where users have more control over their interactions -- and in a manner more like how they engage people in the real world. Relationships are all about identity. You see the person, and can identify them again by their appearance if by nothing else. Even if someone is new to you and gives a false name, you still have seen them. That's not the case online, where anyone can pretend to be anyone. If the service really is supposed to be more like real world interactions, people should be identified. Such an approach also will build trust, which should foster communities -- eh, Circles -- of people to spread out.

3. Google+ Pages. Late last year, Google opened brand pages for businesses. C`mon, they want identity, for numerous reasons. Identity is good for targeting products to new customers and better serving existing ones. Then there are issues of trust and security. Internet trolls can tarnish brands, and what business wants to risk plunking down on the same Net neighborhood as cybercriminals?

4. Trolls. There is a minority of Internet trolls that spoil community experience for everyone. Look how anonymous commenters often pollute the dialog. Google shouldn't enable trolls to harass and demean others while hiding behind the cloak of anonymity.

Last week, Google CEO Larry Page said that G+ has 90 million users. Will the new policy bring in more people? Time will tell.

Google claims 90 million Google+ users, 60% "active" daily

ther daily or weekly.

"There are over 90 million Google+ users, well over double what I announced just a quarter ago," Page said. "Plus users are very engaged with our products. Over 60 percent of them engaged daily and 80 percent engaged weekly." (UPDATE: We've confirmed what some readers suspected: the 60 and 80 percent figures refer to users accessing any Google service—whether it be search, Gmail or something else—while logged in to their Google account, and do not necessarily indicate actual usage of Google+ each day or week. The 90 million figure refers not to active users, but to the total number of people who have created Google+ accounts.)

The increase in overall numbers, no doubt, is due in large part to Google making Plus links a prominent part ofsearch results, and integrating the social network into Google Apps, Gmail, Picasa, and, well, just about everything Google makes. Google+ is apparently growing fast, but still lagging behind Facebook's 800 million active users and Twitter's 100 million active users.

Page also touted growth of Android, Chrome and Gmail while announcing that Google hit more than $10 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time. Revenue for the full fiscal year ending Dec. 31, 2011 was up 29 percent and quarterly revenues were up 25 percent year over year. Net income for the quarter was $2.71 billion on overall revenue of $10.58 billion, up 6.7 percent over the previous year's $2.54 billion. Full-year net income was $9.74 billion on revenue of $37.91 billion. The quarterly numbers fell short of financial analysts' expectations.

Page boasted that Google is signing up many new enterprise customers for its Google Apps suite, including110,000 employees at BBVA, Google's largest business productivity deal that has been publicly disclosed. But advertising, as usual, is still Google's biggest cash cow, accounting for 96 percent of quarterly revenue, compared to 97 percent in the previous year's fourth quarter. Google said mobile advertising is a growing part of total revenue, but didn't specify how much it accounts for.

Google doubles Plus membership with brute-force signup process

Google CEO Larry Page trotted out an impressive statistic during last week's quarterly earnings call: Google+ now has 90 million users, double what it had three months ago. Even better, 60 percent of those users are engaged daily, and 80 percent weekly.

But those users aren't necessarily engaging with Google+. Any action taken during a logged-in Google session—whether it be searching the Internet, checking Gmail or using Google Docs—counts as engagement under the statistic Page used. Google has refused requests from journalists and interested bystanders to reveal exactly what percentage of those 90 million signed-up Google+ users actually view Plus content each day, week or month. Instead, Google is arguing that it doesn't matter: Google+ is so integrated into the overall experience that what matters is the number of users interacting with any Google site. Combined with other steps Google has taken to integrate Plus into search results and other Google properties, the message is clear: Eventually, Google Plus will just be there whether you want it or not.

Facebook has 800 million active users, and 50 percent of them log in each day, an impressive feat given that Facebook is really just one site (albeit one with hooks into many other websites). Given the vast number of services Google offers, and the simple fact that Google performs a large majority of Internet searches, it's not surprising that most Plus users interact with Google sites each day. It would be hard for them not to.

Still, 90 million people signing up for a service in just over six months is a big number, a quite impressive one if it was all due to organic growth—people consciously deciding to create a Google+ account and use the site in the same way they've done with Facebook and Twitter. But it turns out the act of creating a Google+ account is often just an incidental byproduct of signing up for other Google services.

On Friday, the Google Operating System blog (not affiliated with Google) wrote a post titled "New Google Accounts Require Gmail and Google+." While this isn't strictly true, the blog demonstrates how Google is making it difficult for new users not to sign up for Google+.

"If you try to create a Google account from Google's homepage, you'll notice that Google redesigned the page, but that's not all. You'll now have to create a Gmail account, a Google Profile and you'll automatically join Google+," the blog states. "Until now, creating a Google account was quite simple. You could either use an existing e-mail address or create a Gmail account. The redesigned form includes new fields: name, gender (required for Google+) and mobile phone number (not required)."

One exception is that Google+ accounts are not created for users who are under 18 years of age.

Another story on the matter states that the new signup process was put into effect Friday. But it's actually been in place for a couple of months. We checked with Google's public relations team on Friday, and were told that the new signup process was rolled out in November. That helps explain why Page was able to announce such a large increase in the number of Google+ signups, while avoiding any mention of how often people actually use Google+.

"We hadn't changed our Google Accounts sign-up flow in more than seven years so it was due for a refresh," Google tells us. “We're working to develop a consistent sign-up flow across our different products as part of our efforts to create an intuitive, beautifully simple, Google-wide user experience. Making it quick and easy to create a Google Account and a Google profile enables new users to take advantage of everything Google can offer."

Google notes that once you've signed up, you can delete your entire Google account, or just your Google+ profile in the account settings page. As for Android, a Google spokesperson tells us the latest version of the mobile OS lets users sign up for Google+ when creating a Google account, but it's optional.

The Google Operating System blog also notes that the old Web-based signup page, which doesn't force you into Google+, still exists, and you can access it if you know the URL. This process lets you create a Google account, including Google Docs access, without being forced to create a Gmail address or Google+ profile. We asked Google if the company will continue to maintain this older, more limited signup page, but didn't get an answer.

Testing the signup process: Is Google+ avoidable?

We tested out the new signup process to see if there's any way to avoid creating a Google+ account. The process is the same whether you start from the Google home page, or Gmail. Once you've clicked "Sign up for a new Google Account," you're already almost halfway through the process of creating a Google+ profile. The signup screen allows you to uncheck a box that says "Google may use my account information to personalize +1s on content and ads on non-Google websites," but doesn't give you the option to decline creating a Google+ account.

The second screen tells the user "Now that you have a Google Account, create your Google profile." There are only two options: "Add profile photo" or click "next step." There is no "skip Google+" option. Clicking either available option results in the creation of a Google+ account, which is by default public and discoverable in Google search results.

If you see this page, and don't want a Google+ account, run as fast as you can!

The way to avoid creating a Google+ account is to close the browser tab. If you've done that, you can open another Google page and log in, and you'll have a Google account without a Google+ profile. Basically, you must abandon the signup process halfway through in order to create a Google account without an accompanying Google+ profile, which certainly is not intuitive.

You can go into settings afterward and delete the Google+ account. Otherwise, every time you visit a Google site an icon linking to your Google+ profile is on the top right of the screen.

Shaky statistics make Google+ activity difficult to quantify

The point is not to say that signing up for Google+ is a bad thing. At Ars, we've found Google+ to be an effective platform for interacting with readers. Like Twitter, Google+ seems to attract a large number of tech-savvy professionals, and it has some useful methods for dividing and sorting contacts.

And, the new signup process encompassing all services has its advantages. Once you've completed the process from the Google homepage, you automatically have accounts with Google+, Gmail, Picasa, Google Docs, and more. That is convenient—although it would be nice if you were provided the list of services and the ability to choose which ones you want (and don't want) prior to completing the process.

Google+ is still quite new, so we wouldn't expect it to be challenging the popularity of Facebook already. But Google's method for expanding membership can capture a large number of "users" who barely ever visit the site, and Google has a habit of presenting statistics about Google+ usage in a misleading way during its quarterly earnings calls. Thus, the numbers provided by Google so far aren't all that useful for quantifying how active Google+ really is.

7 inch Android, Windows tablets with Pixel Qi sunlight viewable displays from Sol Computer