The web giant has been particularly productive in recent days. After announcing the arrival of Maps on Apple Watch and CarPlay, as well as its project to transform all Android smartphones into earthquake detectors, Google unveils “people maps”. This is a public user profile that gathers several information about them, such as a link to their various social networks, a brief description or their current job, and which is displayed in Google search results.
People cards will appear on Google Chrome in the same way as descriptions of a particular celebrity or that company in the search engine. Anyone can then search for you by simply entering your first and last name on Google and can view your public profile.
At present, these public user profiles are being tested only in India, in English. On the local version of its site, Google explains how it works.
To create a person card, a user will need to log into their Google account and enter this “add me to search” into the American firm's search engine. He will then be redirected to a special page with a form that he will only have to fill out. The last name, first name, profession, location and an “about” biography are the elements that must be filled in to create a profile. You can add information about your studies, your hometown, links to blogs or social networks, as well as an email address and a phone number. For these last points, we must not forget that they will be public.
To do what ?
The interest of this new feature is not yet very clear. Is Google trying to get closer to a popular Wikipedia, a directory or even a social network? Hard to say.
Either way, the potential for abuse is significant here. People can usurp the identity of another to create a false profile or to provide information that the person did not want to make public. To avoid this kind of behavior, Google specifies that each Google account can only create one profile and that it will be authenticated with a phone number. In the event of false accounts, it will be possible to report them.
It remains to be seen whether this type of function will be offered in other countries. For the moment, Google has not indicated anything on this subject.
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- Identity
- India
- Google chrome
- Search engine
- High Tech