Google seems to have finally confirmed that its Google+ social network is little more than a data tracking scheme for marketers.
The feature never really took off as an online hangout, and nearly half of its 540 million monthly active users don't actually visit the social network, ValleyWag reported via The New York Times.
Instead, the $400 billion Google+ scheme is really just in place so the tech giant can garner information about its users and get a more complete picture of their tastes for marketers.
"Google Plus gives you the opportunity to be yourself, and gives Google that common understanding of who you are," said Bradley Horowitz, vice president of product management for Google Plus, as quoted by the Times.
The social network's main purpose is to concentrate consumer information from across the board so Google can know which people are using which services. The company recently began requiring people to sign up for Plus to use their YouTube accounts and other Google programs.
The Plus account becomes a user's stamp for everything from Gmail to YouTube to Google Maps, ensuring that "Google sees who you are and what you do across its services, even if you never once return to the social network itself," the Times reported.
Even though it has a "ghost town" reputation compared with the biggest social network, Google is becoming better than Facebook at garnering user data. Ads can be targeted in great detail if the company knows a user's tastes, hobbies and goals.
"The database of affinity could be the holy grail for more effective brand advertising," said Nate Elliott, an analyst at Forrester studying social media and marketing.
Google, which also works with brands that use its Plus platform, could potentially be stepping over the line when it comes to antitrust laws since consumers are being "forced" to accept a product, according to Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School who studies antitrust law and the Internet.
The company declined to comment on this possibility to the Times.
In spite of privacy concerns, few users have fled the ubiquitous search engine and its features.
"If people want to use your platform enough," Elliott told the Times, "you can get away with quite a lot."
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