Saturday, October 20, 2012

Google No Longer Avatar Friendly?

I've been struggling in an attempt to recover the Google account for my Oberon Octagon avatar. My Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google + account will also be lost. Six years of productive use, above board board and honest, all lost due to a mistake regarding my birthdate. When I attempted to follow their steps to recover the account, I was denied. I can only conjecture at what I failed to do because no one at Google has seen fit to answer my emails.

Apparently I'm not alone as a blogger I admire greatly is also facing termination of her account. Avatar versus monolithic corporation ... outcome not promising. I've been a very strong evangelist for Google and apps. I'm about to write criticism of their terms of operation using one of their products, which I will continue to recommend.


Payment method not valid? Obviously, it wasn't matching my avatar name. But Google never explained even though I tried to contact them about it.

My personal gmail account is not backed by a credit card for certification of age or any other identification requirement. I find it disappointing that a mistake made in re-entering the birthday for my avatar account caused its closure but was Google going to contact me about my avatar's name not seeming likely to be real? Sometime down this line of reasoning would the profile picture not a be a good enough likeness of a human? (Actually, as you can see in the screenshot below, we're getting close to that actuality.)



What is the problem? Are we taking up too much space on the servers? I am disappointed. It's not like I have paid for the account but I have grown accustomed to having my mail segregated by identity: actual, virtual, business, game. I guess my business model of having a variety of email accounts is faulty.

Google provided a rationale to Botgirl Questi and actually has restored her account. As of October 19, mine is gone. However, I need an account for my avatar. I rerouted all the SL IMs for OO to my personal email account and they add up. I am beginning to find "work" in SL with speaking engagements and may still have something on the horizon that I cannot divulge at this time. So, do I Yahoo!?

What seems to be the problem? What can one little guy do about the great big corporation stepping on him? Open another account! oberon0octagon@gmail.com is now in business. Not as elegant as the previous one, but it will do. The biggest determiner here is the CalendarCogs I have in SL that require a Google Calendar. (I also had a problem with Facebook since it's set up using the old, defunct account.)

And within 24 hours, this is what happened:
Hello,
Our system has determined that the name you provided on your Google+ profile Oberon Octagon may not actually be a name.
It may be that the name you provided is that of a business you represent. Or it may be that this is actually your name and our system made a mistake.
We've got a few options for you:
  • If this is the name of a business, brand, or other organization, please sign in to your Google account and change the profile's name to a representative of the organization. You can then, while logged into this profile, create a Google+ Page for the organization. Pages are designed specifically with the needs of organizations in mind, while profiles are designed for individuals.
  • If this is your name, please sign in and follow the instructions to submit more information and help us fix our mistake.
  • If you want to change the name provided, please sign in and follow the instructions to edit your profile. You can also optionally add Oberon Octagon as a nickname, previous name, or transliterated name in addition to your common name, if appropriate.
If none of the above options are appropriate and you use your Google+ identity on YouTube, you can unlink your Google+ profile from YouTube. This will ensure that regular YouTube access will continue but your Google+ profile will be suspended until you take one of the actions above. If you manage a brand channel, we will soon have a better option for creating a Google-wide identity.
If you don't take one of these steps in the next 4 days, your Google+ profile will be suspended. While suspended, you will not be able to make full use of Google services that require an active profile, such as Google+, Reader, Picasa, and YouTube (if you use your Google+ identity on YouTube). This will not prevent you from using other Google services, like Gmail.
We're sorry for the inconvenience,
The Google+ team.
If I have access to mail and Google Calendar, I really don't give a rat's ass about Google + and YouTube for my avatar.