On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog,” says a famous New Yorker cartoon. On Google+, at least, no one will know your gender.
Starting this week, Google will no longer require users to state whether they are male or female. The change, explained by product manager Frances Haugen in the video above, came after users requested it. “Gender can be a sensitive topic, especially on the Internet,” Haugen says.
Users will be able to adjust the privacy setting on their Google+ profile, as they can with other personal information, like date of birth.
One benefit to the change is that it paves the way for business accounts. As Christian Oestlien, Google’s group project manager, noted in a blog entry last week on Google+, “It was kind of an awkward moment for us when we asked Ford for his (or was it her?) gender!”
What do you think? Is Google right in making gender information private or is this political correctness gone wild?
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