Google said it would start communicating with some businesses about brand profiles on Google+ this week, but they also said they’d shut down the ones that had already been popping up.
Here’s what Google’s Christian Oestlien said on July 6:
We have a great team of engineers actively building an amazing Google+ experience for businesses, and we will have something to show the world later this year.
The business experience we are creating should far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness to businesses. We just ask for your patience while we build it. In the meantime, we are discouraging businesses from using regular profiles to connect with Google+ users. Our policy team will actively work with profile owners to shut down non-user profiles.
Over the next few months we are going to be running a small experiment with a few marketing partners to see the effect of including brands in the Google+ experience. We’ll begin this pilot with a small number of named partners.
Businesses were asked to apply for consideration.
Oestilen then posted another update on July 13 saying some would be coming this week, and that the application was being shut down (last Friday). He wrote:
To the thousands upon thousands of businesses that applied to be a part: THANK YOU! We won’t be able to accommodate everyone, but your interest has got us very focused on accelerating our development plans.
He said Google would be selecting a diverse set of business partners for the test period, and they’d be in touch with those selected this week. They will “let the world know who they are” soon after, he said.
We still don’t know who the chose few are, but they have been shutting some down. Among those removed so far are Boing Boing, ABC News Radio, and Search Engine Land to name a few. Search Engine Land posted the following to its Facebook Page:
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