"Don't underestimate the ability of some segment of the population to be offended by something you do. Whatever you do, you'll offend someone."

Being offended is an epidemic...

They seriously hurt a lot of people in a very predictable and avoidable way, and are not interested in fixing the harm they've done. And you're whitewashing it without giving any substantive answer to the points in the linked article.

If you don't want to be "outed" by google, why give google the information needed to do that?

Is creating 2 separate google accounts impossible these days?

I had two separate accounts. Google merged them despite my telling them not to.

Seems to me HN covered this:

https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/VZSLjkdq...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6745525

http://i.imgur.com/YgEjUuI.jpg

Google's proven it cannot be trusted to respect user choice, nor to not arbitrarily change the rules at a later date.

I thought I had two separate accounts for YouTube and Gmail. Not anymore. I used my Gmail address to register an account with YouTube. What prevents them in the future from buying some company, and link those accounts because I use the same credit card or some other supposedly unique identifier?

AFAIK it's required by the new terms that you give your real name. And to do much of anything you need to verify your account with an SMS to a previously unused cell phone number.

No, but google will do all it can to link them.

It isn't "offended" to be outed amidst transphobic people, it's "endangered". I wish we lived in a society so safe it would only be "offended".

Being offended is a moral issue and I agree, as a business you can't fight that 100%. However, being forced to conform to a business's view of your identity is unethical, especially as Google changed the rules - if they had indicated this might happen then those affected could have chosen not to use Plus.

So's privacy intrusion.