Google Plus – It’s What Ford Has and Small Businesses Haven’t!!!

September 21st, 2011 Bidisha Gupta

Ford Motor Company

They say if you’re big and popular (well known to public, that is) everyone opens the door for you. And see, Google is no exception to the rule. While it opens up its Google+ for big multinational Fortune 500 companies like Ford, it is imposing ban on Google+ profiles of small businesses like Hypetree. Ford paves its way to Google Plus but small businesses are still on queue…

Early this morning I received a mail from Alex, of Hypetree – a music discovery engine, in which he communicated the issue that Google is banning the Google+ profiles of small businesses. Now that was not a news to me as we too have received a similar kind of warning message from Google stating that the name (Social Guy) we were using at that point of time didn’t comply with Google+ Names Policy.

Google Plus Account Suspension

According to the policy one should use the name he/she is most commonly referred to in real life. The same also stated, “you cannot create a profile for a non-person entity such as a pet or business,” as of now. However, Google has confirmed that it is planning to launch business profiles for Google+ later this year.

But here’s the catch – how can you launch a feature while some are already using it? Don’t believe such discrimination is possible by Google? Say hello to Ford Motor Company’s Google+ profile.

Ford Motor Company on Google Plus

Although the profile is marked as “Test Account”, the profile has over 15000 followers and is doing a brisk business.

Now my question is if Ford (yeah, we understand it’s a BIG business) can get a “Test Account” why can’t we, the small & medium businesses? The Google+ beta launched yesterday with 9 new features (I know what you are thinking… but no, Google+ business profile is not one of them). This time we all expected that the Beta version will have business profile feature in it, but we guess, if you are not BIG in business, even Google gives li’l value to you!

Still, as Alex has aptly highlighted, Google is Google for a reason (may be a lot of them) we have to wait for a Google+ Business profile. And something inside my head is telling me, it’s gonna be a long impatient wait…

Posted in Google, Social Media, Social Networking
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  • http://www.hypetree.com/beta.php Alex

    They’ll have to be careful with their business profiles… Facebook users are already wary of businesses selling to them via that platform, and if the same thing happens to G+, it could end up being a problem for Google too.

  • http://www.reviewexpert.org/ Ethen Mg

    I haven’t really used Google + a lot but it looks great….Has a nice interface. Thanks for the share…!