{"id":71384,"date":"2013-02-27T00:08:39","date_gmt":"2013-02-26T22:08:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=71384"},"modified":"2013-02-27T12:12:36","modified_gmt":"2013-02-27T10:12:36","slug":"google-plans-to-track-users","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/71384-google-plans-to-track-users.html","title":{"rendered":"Google+ plans to track users"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google Inc<\/a> transformed the Internet by cataloging the Web’s countless pages. Now it wants to keep better track of the Web’s multitude of users.<\/p>\n

The Mountain View, California-based company said Tuesday it would begin encouraging websites and mobile apps to accept log-in credentials via Google+<\/a>, its social network.<\/p>\n

The integration with third-party sites and apps, which Google hopes will help it track users as they surf across the Internet, represents the search powerhouse’s latest effort to establish a foothold in the all-important social Web arena – and beat back competition from Facebook Inc<\/a>, the sector leader.<\/p>\n

Sites that have so far agreed to accept Google’s social sign-in include The Guardian and USA Today’s websites, as well as Fancy, the shopping site, and Fitbit, the personal fitness-tracking service and app, Google said in a blog post Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Since 2008, Facebook has been able to gather massive troves of information about its users’ activities even if they are not on Facebook because many popular apps – such as Spotify’s music streaming service – allow users to log in with their Facebook identity, which results in data funneled back to the social network.<\/p>\n

In response to Facebook’s rise, Google has made its social Web efforts a top priority in recent years. But results have been mixed under the leadership of Chief Executive Larry Page<\/a> and Vic Gundotra, the influential senior vice president spearheading Google’s social networking efforts.<\/p>\n

Launched in 2011, Google+ still lags far behind Facebook: it had 100 million monthly active users in December, according to comScore<\/a>, compared to well over 1 billion for Facebook. But Google officials have downplayed the lukewarm public reception, saying they view Google+ more as an invisible data “backbone” that tracks individual users across its various properties – and less as a consumer Internet destination.<\/p>\n

Over the past year the company has made changes to the log-in process at its YouTube<\/a> subsidiary, for instance, in order to nudge the video site’s 800 million users to sign in and leave comments with their Google+ accounts rather than anonymous handles.<\/p>\n

(Reporting by Gerry Shih; Editing by Richard Chang)<\/p>\n

More Google news<\/h3>\n

Internet porn ban plan sparks uproar<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Google pays the price for French connection<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Google is rumoured to be opening retail stores<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Chromebook Pixel vs MacBook Air<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Google will begin encouraging websites and mobile apps to accept log-in credentials via Google+, its social network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":340871,"featured_media":54991,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[167],"class_list":["post-71384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-google"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71384"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/340871"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71386,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71384\/revisions\/71386"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}