As you know, I am a total google addict. And my biggest fear in life is waking up with all my Google services switched off. If the Bible was to be written today, a permanent disconnect from Google services and loss of data would be my version of hell.

So I was very ambivalent towards Google +.  From one perspective, I wanted to get an invite badly, but from another perspective, I would want to get the invite using another, less personal Gmail account, which I want to keep more or less secure.
From one perspective, they can kick FB's arse any day with a G-style social network, especially with the Android army lurking in the background and enormous Gmail population. And their strategy of making Google+ desirable by making it available to an exclusive group works well (it worked for Gmail).

But this strategy can also backfire. And the innocent Gmail users can be affected. Do you know how the invite looks like? Do you know who of your friends are using it?
What do you do if you get a Google+ invite from a friend and the link links you to the registration form requiring your email address and password.

Today I got this:


I got it right after waking up on my iPhone. The link led to a registration form asking to fill in the email and password. And my sleeping brain, after years of staying on the watch for pranks like that, made me type in the password. The craving to test the Google+ was bad... And obviously, I got an error message "you can't access Google+ right now".
And now I don't know whether it was a prank to steal my password or if this is a standard G-interface, but I can tell you one thing: If someone hacks your Facebook account, that may be painful, but tolerable. But if someone gets access to your Gmail/Google/Blogger/... unified password, you are in my version of modern hell....

Boo on Google for not thinking through the security strategy and not informing Gmail users about how the Google+ invites look like. Could be a good marketing strategy as well. What antitrust committee would charge a provider for an attempt to make the user base informed of possible pranks...