Google Update: Google+ Profiles Will Be Publicly Accessible & Plans to Rebrand Picasa and Blogger

Two Google news items from Search Engine Land to share:

1. Google Profiles

From the Google+ Web Site:

The purpose of Google Profiles is to enable you to manage your online identity. Today, nearly all Google Profiles are public. We believe that using Google Profiles to help people find and connect with you online is how the product is best used. Private profiles don’t allow this, so we have decided to require all profiles to be public.

Keep in mind that your full name and gender are the only required information that will be displayed on your profile; you’ll be able to edit or remove any other information that you don’t want to share.

If you currently have a private profile but you do not wish to make your profile public, you can delete your profile. Or, you can simply do nothing. All private profiles will be deleted after July 31, 2011.

Greg Finn takes a look at this change, tosses in a few screenshots, and points out how this policy differrs from Facebook’s approach.

2. New Names Ahead

Google is planning to rename two of its popular services soon: Blogger will become Google Blogs and Picasa will become Google Photos. That’s according to Mashable, which says the changes are due in the next six weeks.

Google’s YouTube property will not be included in the company’s rebranding efforts, but other products beyond Picasa and Blogger could be.

We reached out to Google for more information, but the company told Search Engine Land it would not be commenting on the report.

Read the Complete Report by Matt McGee

Filed under: News, Profiles, Video Recordings