Google is an interesting company to watch especially around the mistakes they make with the roll out of Google+. First of all they made the mistake of trying to enforce real names as Friendster did years ago with their fakesters issues and Facebook did a few years after Friendster. For both Friendster and Facebook it didn’t work out, therefore it is surprising that Google is making exactly the same mistake. Facebook was able to enforce this in the first few years since Facebook required a .edu mail address for sign up.

Besides that the real name issue Google still thinks that everybody got a first and last name which is not true, first Google forgets that there is such a thing as a mononimity (having just one name). Then there are many cultural differences in names and the W3 did a wonderful job in summing this differences up and providing a solution for your sign up forms.

Now Google realizes that enforcing common names is not working they have a new thing they focus on: mature and offensive content in pictures and to be more precise gestures that could be offensive. The interesting thing of that is that Google is once again thinking very US centric; the finger is seen in the US as very offensive, however in Iran a thumbs up is seen as an identical gesture. Same goes for showing your soles of your shoes in the Middle east or to show the palms of your hands in Greece.

If you are a global service (and I think Google is position Google+ in that way ;)), act globally and be aware that not every gesture means the same in each country, or in each context. Therefore I repeat my earlier words I wrote about Google+ earlier:

And since they cannot solve it, they shouldn’t bother to do so. The only thing they do show now, is showing they still don’t understand what people do, they have hard time to grasp the social part.