Star Trek's Wil Wheaton thinks Google+ is becoming an annoying mistake

Google is increasingly using its social network Google+ as the glue that binds its other Google services together. Wil Wheaton, the writer and actor probably best known for his role as Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation, recently wrote, "I like Google Plus. Some of the smartest people I've ever read are on Google Plus, and the Hangout is amazing. But Google is doing everything it can to force Google Plus on everyone, and it's pissing me off."

Wheaton rants on, "Yesterday, I tried to like a video on YouTube. I wasn't signed in to my Google Plus account, and this is what I saw: Where the thumbs up and thumbs down used to be, there is now a big G+ Like button. When you go anywhere near it, you get a little popup that tells you to 'upgrade to Google plus' for some reason that I don't remember, because the instant I saw it, I made a rageface."

He continued, "Oh, go f--k 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.' The worst part of this? For a producer like me, I'm going to lose a crapton of potential up-votes for Tabletop, because the core of my audience is tech-savvy and may not want to 'upgrade' to yet another f--king social network they don't want or need."

Say hello to the new look of Google Plus (screenshots)

To all of this, I can only say, "Deal with it." If you don't want to use Google services, you don't have to. My friend and colleague Tom Henderson recently wrote a piece on how to divorce Google and you can do it too.

Unlike Facebook, which makes it very hard to leave the service and harder still to get your data out of it, Google makes it easy for you pick up your toys and go home. Indeed the Data Liberation Front, a Google engineering team, does nothing but work on making it easy for you to export your data from the various Google services.

Of course, there is that one problem for any content creator that if you try to get away from Google, you also end up moving farther away from all of Google's users. Personally, I don't have a problem with Google using Google+ to unify its services. It makes all of them easier to use. Besides, it's not like Google has been hiding that it's their intention from day one to make Google+ the core of its service offerings.

Indeed, that's one of the reasons I'm always amused at rants from people who think Google+ will never be very important. If they simply looked at how Google+ is becoming the core service for such Google services as Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube, etc. it becomes clear that Google+ must become the largest of all social networks. Yes, in time, even larger than Facebook.

And, for those who don't want to use Google+, well you don't have to. The reality though is that if you're going to look for traffic or services from Google, sooner or later you're likely to find yourself with a Google+ account.

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