[Stilgherrian writes: Oh dear. This post has generated a lot of interest. Thank you for that interest. But if you’re visiting for the first time, I strongly suggest you also read my lengthy response to commenters and the fair warning before posting your own comment.]
I knew this would happen sooner or later. Google, a data mining company in the United States, has the ignorant arrogance to tell me, a citizen of Australia, that my name — my legal name — doesn’t fit their scheme for how names “should” work. Well fuck you, arseholes!
What’s worse, this is how they tell you.
They suspend your profile, tell you your name is wrong, and tell you to change it.
Your profile has been suspended.
It appears that the name you entered doesn’t comply with our Names Policy.
The Names Policy requires that you use the name that you are commonly referred to in real life in your profile. Nicknames, maiden names, and so on, should be entered in the Other Names section of the profile. Profiles are currently limited to individuals; we will be launching a profile for businesses and other entities later this year.
Your profile will be suspended until you do edit your name to comply with the Names Policy: you will not be able to make full use Google services that require an active profile, such as Google+, Buzz, Reader and Picasa. This will not prevent you from using other Google services, like Gmail.
We understand that Google+ and it’s [sic] Names Policy may not be for everyone at this time. We would hate to see you go, but if you choose to leave, make a copy of your Google+ data first. Then, click here to leave Google+.
Listen, Googlecunts. This name precisely fits your Names Policy.
This is the name I’m “commonly referred to in real life”.
Did you even look to see if that were true before acting? No. Slack cunts.
Not only that, it’s the name that I have consistently used on every legal document, from passport to Medicare card, from property leases to witness statements, for thirty… fucking… years!
Oh, you’re worried about me putting a “.” in the surname field? That’s because I had to put something in there because your stupid fucked-up data verification code demanded that I not leave that field empty, even though that would be the morally and legally correct thing for me to have done.
What’s wrong is not my name. What’s wrong is your fucked-up Names Policy.
You stupid, stupid bastards clearly have no fucking idea how names work in the real world. For all your cleverness in building huge data centres to mine every scrap of personal information imaginable, somewhere along the line you’ve failed to Hoover up the fact that names don’t always fit into your neat Americo-centric first name / middle initial / last name pattern.
They never have, and they never will.
And don’t give me some bullshit excuse about how this is “unusual”. You’ve been in business for a decade. You’re one of the richest corporations on the planet. I know damn well there’s lots of good research on naming practices out there. Are you seriously suggesting that you build stuff without first reviewing the basics? Are you seriously suggesting that you’re incapable of dealing with the merely “unusual”?
What you also seem not to have figured out is how to open a conversation with someone about something as personal as their name.
You don’t fucking well start off by asserting they’re wrong and you’re right and they need to change. Show a bit of goddam humility, you cunts, and gently enquire whether things are as they seem. And then, only after there’s been a reasonable period for people to respond, do you start suspending services.
I’ve already written about how only fools would rush in and pour their lives into Google+. Seems I was right.
So here’s what I reckon should happen.
- Forward me a copy of the email from last week where you indicated that there might be a problem. That seems to have gone astray. Note here that I’m giving you the opportunity to lie and pretend that you did actually send such an email and that you didn’t simply act like cunts and suspend service.
- Apologise. Profusely. Your behaviour is offensive and you need to make amends. Yes, my behaviour is offensive too, but I’m the aggrieved party. Your first customer service challenge is to reduce my anger. It’s about time Google learned how to do customer service anyway.
- You fix the entire workflow for notifying people about name problems.
- For a start, that first suspension notice should offer more choices than just “Edit your name”. You know, maybe the name is right and you’re wrong.
- Actually, before that, suspension should not be your first action. Fix that. Cunts.
- Get rid of this stupid “must have two names” rubbish.
Now there’s this other whole thing about not allowing people to use screen names and other pseudonyms. That’s pretty fucked up too. But I reckon we’ve given you enough for one day, eh?
Having known you for most of the thirty years you have been Stilgherrian, i applaud your rant sir.
I am fairly certain i introduced myself to you as creog, way back in the Scriptorium days….
Thank you for the lulz and hopefully again you will be able to use your android or any other G service that has now become essentially inaccessible with this ridiculous suspension.
creog
I have to jump in with those who have commented on the tone of this article – How can you expect to get anything done when all most people can see is a tantrum? I agree that Google made an obvious error; there’s no question there. But honestly, what an overreaction. Until I got to the part where you mentioned you’d been using the name for over thirty years, I’d gotten the impression that this article was written by a teenager. Is all the swearing simply because you were that upset, or is that just how you speak most of the time? It really doesn’t make your point very well, and implying that your inappropriate behaviour is justifiable simply because you felt wronged doesn’t help either. But I suppose it will be assumed that my comment is a personal attack, rather than my taking a genuine interest. I’ve never agreed with the first-name-last-name template, in general. But I think you could be presenting your complaint a lot better. Kind of hypocritical to be screaming at them about how to handle the situation.
@Zymish: You’re making the (false) assumption that Google is the primary target audience for this blog post and that I expect(ed) the blog post to resolve the problem.
I believe I’ve already answered the questions about the language and the anger, and if you want to know how I usually write, well, you’re looking at a website with 2000+ posts and links to everything else I do in the media. Go your hardest and draw your own conclusions.
I have something of a professional interest in names and computer programs, and I will state flat out that things violating the “normal Anglo naming conventions” is the sort of thing that you run into within the first couple *thousand* names you try to work with. At most.
How can I say this? Because I work for a company that writes software for government record management. Things like the legal documents that register birth and death certificates and change-of-name proceedings. You know, the sort of stuff where what goes in and comes out had DAMN WELL BETTER be your legal name, because it is being used as that when customers-of-our-customers do things like name searches.
Admittedly, it has been a bit of a challenge to get some of our conversion standards to explicitly permit Unicode rather than only ISO-Latin-1, but that is at least a hell of a lot rarer to run into problems with in the US, and they learned early on that US-ASCII wasn’t going to cut it.
And, admittedly, all the fun of surname prefixing (“de la”, “von”, etc.) and suffixing (“Sr., Jr., III, Esq.” and so on) can be quite the mess when you’re trying to clean up data from an old system which got it wrong. Or trying to scan it in off of a document. Guess what? That’s what “punt to a human for review” exists for. It should be the *first* thing you do when something doesn’t fit your view of the world. And it should be a human who is trained to deal specifically with the machine asking “what do I do with this?” and how to resolve weirdness.
But to sum it up in a sentence? This is what I get paid to deal with. So do the four other people on my team. Our entire company is smaller than many Google departments; they can damned well afford people whose entire *job* is to figure out how to get the code to deal with “weird” situations gracefully. It just isn’t that difficult to turn “reject for lack of surname” into “check to make sure they didn’t just accidentally forget it”, optionally followed by “flag for human review” if you’re being really persnickety about things. Only after *both* of those is it even remotely reasonable to consider “send an inquiry”, much less suspension of service.
Anything less is just plain being fucking lazy and careless about it. I know for a *fact* that Google has employees who were part of Google+ before it was even in the ‘alpha public’ stage who violate this naming policy, because they are people I have met in person. This wasn’t just “overlooked” or “a beta issue”, it was raised as an issue before it ever got a whiff of going public and what you see today is the result of deliberate decisions.
Spare a thought for those of Vietnamese heritage, some of which have surnames that when anglicised result in 2 letters.
Most name policies won’t accept “Ng” in the Surname field, as it’s too short to be a “real surname”.
See also: http://xkcd.com/327/
two of my brother’s friends from school are stuffed: ah ha, and ha ng
Stilgherrian, I have deep sympathy for the Google arragance towards you. How many times has my E-mail address been refused as “not correct, cos we can’t send you a mailing”. On inquiring they had added .ph or .co.uk or some other bullshit.
Lot’s of Indonesians only have ONE name,remember the Bali bomber ? The gods at Google will have trouble with them (300,000,000 strong) hee hee!!
To add insult to injury, I notice the folk on the Google Profiles Support Team don’t have to post their full name. It’s just “Brian”, not “Brian Surname“. I guess the intention is to make Google seem cool and informal. However, it leaves me with the impression that Stilgherrian is dealing with not-too-bright interchangeable flunkies on US minimum wage.
I hope this blog post lets the naming issue get escalated up to the next level, where workers have the freedom and autonomy to post with their last name. Stilgherrian would rather deal with the organ grinder than the performing monkeys.
Oh, and “Brian” – whoever you are, we know that leaving off your last name anonymizes you. But worse, this allows you to be unaccountable for your actions, because nobody is ever going to know which of the many “Brians” working in Google HQ signed off on the decision. So you’ll never have to take responsibility for your actions. Isn’t that grand? But never the less, whoever you are, and wherever you may be, we still know you’re a tool.
@Down and Out of Sà i Gòn: I’m actually not fussed that Google’s representative was only identified as “Brian”. That may be how he or she prefers to be identified, and in any event there’s a tracking number on the email that’ll presumably link back to a specific human.
But if “Brian” is not Brian’s complete name, well, indeed it is a bit of a double standard.
Some have been busted using pseudonyms, e.g. “Bayle”, a name which does not exist in the last few US censuses. (Responses from “Bayle” seem to have dried up.)
Google+ Blog “Suspension saga continues”
cites the letter signed with:
Is it (The Google Profiles Support Team) the “the name commonly referred to in real life” or they hint using one ID names for a profile and the others for identifying (signing) yourself?
Did the responding person have Multiple Nym Disorder?
Or they write Emails in groups?
There was a comment (later deleted) which listed the G+ profiles of all members of the profile killing team. Their leader had given his occupation as Google Profiles Team, and so his co-workers were all linked to him. One of them promptly deleted their profile. I’d like to think that person suddenly gained enlightenment as to why someone might not want their wallet name listed every fucking place they went on the internet … but I doubt it.
Hahahaha! Well done Sir!
As you can see I also prefer to use the ‘interwebs’ under a pseudonym that has been one of my preferred ‘social’ handles for about 20 years, having to do with my Wordsmith and Musical endeavors and then transferred to the ‘interwebs’. because if any fame/notoriety .is associated with my existence, it’s more likely to be associated with this handle than the name on my driver’s license.
May not always agree with some of the words in your vocabulary, but… 🙂
Why I was prompted to write this is to tell you that my ISP (2nd best in Australia!) who acquired my original ISP has your location blocked. I could only get in via Anonymouse 🙂
Apparently some of your vocabulary is causing their (non-existent) ‘voluntary’ Australian Govt filtering system to freak out !!! No ‘Adult Only’ Options….
I accepted an ‘invite’ to G+, got as far as that name screen, stopped, thought for a moment, and just closed the screen. (As I said, any web existence of mine is associated with this handle, not my driver’s license!) Can’t see why I would like to go back, other than that FB has recently gone even more bananas than usual with more insane unannounced changes that mean I seriously was looking for a CREDIBLE alternative…. but that’s another story… ohh well …
The new games ticker is driving me mad – even games I BLOCKED are showing when friends are running them! Had to delete hundreds of game player friends to stop the massive download rate clogging my broadband!
Now FB has banned me from liking anything as it claims I have liked too many times! Also my wide screen laptop now has the page squeezed into the middle with heaps of wasted space around the edges! And now I can’t like or comment on some of my favorite Political groups!
Fight The Good Fight with all your might….
You wrote “It’s about time Google learned how to do customer service anyway.”
You are not the customer.
You are the product.
The ad companies, who actually pay something (28 billion USD in 2010), are the customers.
You’re just one of many data points they could potentially “monetize”. Since you’re outside the norm, it would take some effort on their part (through human intervention) and apparently you’re not worth that. It’s a simple economic decision.
They’re not a charity or a non-profit, even though they like to pretend to be one, as having such an image encourages people to surrender their personal information.
Not the customer, just the product ? That’s a needlessly pedantic viewpoint. The eyeballs owner’s are an essential part of Google’s business model, and just as critical to please as their paying customers. Like a TV network their goal is to attract your attention (mouse-clicks) as that is where the advertising $ flow.
They have acted in a stupid way that they can get away with because of their monopolistic position. Many companies that generated the same amount of entertaining swearing would already be issuing apologetic press releases; will they or is the idiotic policy entrenched too far. They would be wise to remember that 10 years ago they were nothing, and hubris alone will not prevent 10 more making them resemble AOL. I’m most interested to see if they try to fix this result of poor upfront thinking or whether their attention moves on and Google+ is left to wither.
@hb: This observation…
… goes to the essence of the situation. And that’s how I began by Crikey article, To Google, we are data fodder, and I am an unperson.
Could I refine that somewhat? We aren’t the product, our personal information is the raw material for Google, Facebook and the bulk of the web 2.0 businesses built on targeted advertising.
They are going to slice, dice and process our information to suit whatever they believe will maximise their returns. That could include slapping our pictures on adverts for some sports drink or hamburger we’ve ‘Liked’ or followed as part of a promotion, or even just what the service thinks we’re interested in based upon their algorithm.
We have to understand this when dealing with these services, we are raw material just like cattle on their way to an Indonesian abattoir.
Sir: you have been the subject of an article in The Register.
What’s more interesting is an observation he made yesterday: “Interesting. El Reg commenters generally more in favour of @stilgherrian than commenters on his own site!” I suggested that might be because commenters are reacting first to the “bad language” rather than the real issues, and that’s framing their response.
However since then he seems to have changed his mind: “So you know, @stilgherrian, comments on the Google+ names story now dominate my El Reg story lines. The Google apologists have chimed in.”
I agree entirely.
Maybe I’m weird but doesn’t anyone see what’s really going on here. If Google/Facebook and all the other social networks can’t get explicit data such as first AND second names then all the algorithms/logic fails to work s well when matching, identifying and supporting search. Simplicity sucks if you are in the social network business of using as much personally detailed data as possible to establish patterns, work out who should be friend recommended to who etc. There is motive in this naming policy, don’t kid yourself.
As an aside I have an employee with one word name from Indo and it really annoys the crap out of me how often people and forms demand his second name from me. He’s an awesome guy stuffed around by stupid rules like this also.
Absolutely right, Marc. I think people are missing the point that the business models of free online services, particularly social media platforms, are based upon harvesting user information.
The more accurate and identifiable it is, the more valuable that data becomes and hence the more lucrative the business.
Apart from Google, I wonder how much of these shenanighans by various services is being driven by monetizing user data as far as possible to justify sky-high valuations of their businesses?
Well done, mate. I really hope you get an adequate response from Google. ISTR the majority of Icelandic folk have mononyms, too.
Stilgherrian is an assumed name. That’s pretty much where this story begins and ends. You chose a name that does not conform to what is socially expected of a person’s legal moniker. Does that make you wrong? No. But, if you assume that failing to conform to the socially accepted norm is not going to cause you any issues whatsoever…well, NOW you are wrong. Are you seriously trying to imply that this is the first time since you adopted this name in your 20’s that you have had difficulty in using it on a form, document, etc? Perhaps the real lesson here is that any twit with a non-conformist streak can raise hell at will when the world proves un-ready for their individualism. We didn’t need your rant to know that. Get over it.
Ren: you’re just another “blame the victim” wanker. And that’s where this story begins and ends.
Patience my friend.
Sooner or later an “African-American” will try to use a name such as that used by the activist Malcolm X.
Google will crumble rather than risk being called RACIST.
They’re being called “racist” already for blocks of their own employees.
You’re overestimating how much white people give a shit. They don’t even notice. (This is what the technical term “unexamined privilege” means.)
I’d like to re-emphasise, by the way, what an incredible fuckup this is.
The G+ software is brilliant. It’s one of those products that is just ridiculously good. As an office productivity destruction tool, G+ knocks Facebook into a cocked hat – I did some A/B testing on this matter. I actually want to love it lots and give it my life and tastes and let its advertisers get their paws on my juicy, juicy credit rating and probably a DNA sample as well, in return for the very finest of Internet-as-television entertainment.
But the names rubbish means I’m not only not inviting anyone (unless I want to encourage them to risk their email), I’m actually reluctant to post content of substance that isn’t names rubbish related (since those are the people adding me these days), and about half my stream and increasing is names rubbish. When I go to post, the number in “Also email X people not yet using Google+” keeps going up – those are people who were in my circles, but have left or been booted off.
I don’t think Google realise just how dependent they are on the goodwill of us cattle to keep supplying the milk. I’m seeing serious discussion of alternatives to Google, for collaborative documents, for email, and almost unbelievably, for search.
Just how toxic does your brand have to be to make Bing look like a workable idea?
@Ren:@Ron: You’re a classic example of the ignorance and stupidity that leads to intolerance and suffering in so many realms.The key giveaway, Ron? This phrase.
The crime of being different. Of being in the minority. Of not being in your — what’s the other phrase? — in the “socially accepted norm”.
Problem is, Ron, your idea of “socially acceptable” is limited by your own ignorance.
We’re all in that situation, I suppose, shaped by our experience.
But you’re too stupid to realise that the world is richer and more complex than you know. The limit here is not what “society” finds acceptable — as I’ve explained, all manner of organisations in my society and others can and do deal daily with me and with others far more unusual — but some far narrower scope invented by your ignorance.
Too stupid to have understood from the discussion here and elsewhere that mononyms, “assumed” or not — as if it would be different if someone else had written the word and signed the document — are far more common than you know and are far, far from being at an extreme of name variation.
Too stupid to realise that the merely unusual is not “unacceptable”.
Too stupid to have realised that, no, of course I’m not saying “this is the first time … that [I] have had difficulty in using it on a form”. But it is one of the very, very few times I’ve encountered a names policy so brain-dead and internally inconsistent that it can’t even cope with “Anne Marie van Dyke” or “Adrian D’Hage” And certainly one of the very, very few times an organisation has had the arrogance to begin the conversation by saying I’m straight-up wrong.
No, Ron… I’m calling you Ron because Ren isn’t a proper name. I don’t know anyone called Ren. You must have made a mistake. No, Ron, for you the world is simple. “Conform with my narrow views, or shut up.”
I hadn’t written about it yet, but I was going to disagree with people who were calling Google’s actions “racist”. I was going to say it’s not as bad as that. But upon reflection it’s exactly the same underlying attitude. The same attitude you’re showing right here, Ron. Someone does things differently from how you do them, so they’re wrong and must change their ways.
Well fuck you, Ron, and the toxic tapeworm you rode in on.
I’m a non person too so I didn’t even sign up, seems that was the right answer. Now seems like a great time for someone else to enter the search engine market.
I’ll be posting your rant to G+ on this pseudonymous account, just to see whether the googlebots notice.
Ahh, this is most amusing… Back in the late 90’s i worked for a local electronics firm, the VERY first customer was called “fungus the bogeyman”. Thats his name, on his credit card, driving license and passport.
Its a comical name but they key is thats his name.
Or a guy who we interviewed for a job who’s name was “Kirk”.
Not Mr, just Kirk.
Changing your name is a legal thing to do. Its just typical of some giant like google to decide what the “socially” accepted norm should be. The norm is your name. NOT google (mis) interperation of it. Trouble is, most numpties will bend to googles whim, especially when they start selling all this data.
Fuck google, facebook, twatter et all and all the shit that is NET2.0.
I wonder if Bono and Madonna and a few others have profiles? This might prove selective discrimination and be good fodder for a legal challenge.
And, @Ren, apart from your opinion, specifically why does only having one name make you eligible for discimination? Should Pieter van den Hoogenband also be discriminated against because his has four parts? The IOC don’t think so. Where is the authority you can refer to (other than Google and you) that has a right to determine what names are appropriate?
@Kelly: Obviously because Ron’s dick is bigger than yours…
On the other hand, Pieter van den Hoogenband’s parents were obviously compensating for something….
This is the kind of thing that happens to socialists, especially stupid socialists who laughably only go by one name.
“Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.”
What we have in this comments section here, is clear evidence of who the fools are.
Lucky for them, they are likely using pseudonyms.
I, for one, heartily agree with your post and the manner in which you have chosen to post it. You have chosen a subject with is seriously and honestly in need of a good smackdown, and by golly, you have provided that smackdown! I tip my hat to you, Sir.
And ignore all those nitwits who simply don’t have the talent to do what you did with even half as much of the artistry and cathartic vitriol in which you did it.
Cheers,
René Kabis ↠My real name, which Google+ has issues with as well…