Why is Google Kicking People off Google+?

If you are Google, why would you kick people off the social network you are trying to build from the ground up?

Quality control is the answer. Various reports in the media are indicating Google recently kicked off various users of Google+ because it is trying to set a positive tone with the social network. The company kicked off dozens of users for violating its community standards policy regarding names. Even users who were former Google employees such as Kirrily "Skud" Robert were given the boot for this reason.

The most famous person to get the boot thus far, and the one who likely started the hubbub in the media, was William Shatner. The famous actor's Google+ was eliminated without much warning. The actor tweeted after, "My Google+ account was flagged for violating standards. Saying hello to everyone apparently is against the rules maybe I should say goodbye?"

He was quickly reinstated after numerous complaints but the move opened Google up for scrutiny, which has yet to simmer.

Various users indicated that once they were given the boot, not only was their Google+ taken away, but all of their Google related information was gone as well. This included Google docs, calendar, Gmail and everything related to the company.

Blogger Robert Scoble on his own Google+ page reported comments from Vic Gundotra, senior vice president of Engineering at Google, who explained the process of elimination. According to Scoble, the elimination "was about about having common names and removing people who spell their names in weird ways, like using upside-down characters, or who are using obviously fake names, like 'god' or worse."

Facebook has a similar policy which forbids people to use fake names. Scoble said Gundotra admitted the company messed up in its first pass at "quality control." He says the company is looking for a better way to handle pseudonyms, but it will be a while before the team can turn on those features.

Google has said it plans on building a special Google+ for brands and businesses. Thus, any Google+ account with a famous name (and technically, a famous person is a brand), has likely been discouraged by Google.

"There may be a tiny handful of business profiles that will remain in the meantime solely for the purpose of testing how businesses interact with consumers," Christian Oestlien from Google said in a blog post on his Google+ site.

The company recently introduced the new social network based on sharing exclusively and began building it up through a field testing service. Like Gmail and other services before it, Google has decided to build this service up through invitations.

Already, Google has surpassed 20 million users on the social network. Despite the impressive start, Google has been criticized for its handling of executing Google+'s growth. At one point, Google ceased invitations for the service citing the social network was growing too fast.

"They seem to be indicating that they are overwhelmed," Ezra Gottheil, analyst at TBR, Technology Business Research, said at the time. "It's simple arithmetic, you have a contact list and you invite people easily. People may have invited people inadvertently. So it looks like they made a mistake. They didn't estimate how fast it would explode and a rapid influx of traffic."

Follow Gabriel Perna on Twitter at @GabrielSPerna