Why would you share your real name with Google when making a gmail account, or use your real picture?

It's fine to be pseudonymous on the Internet if you are in control of your pseudonyms, which Google accounts actually does allow with some extra work (don't mix your chrome profiles and Google accounts, etc.)

Or, like me, you can roll the dice on real names on the Internet (for professional things mostly)

> Why would you share your real name with Google when making a gmail account, or use your real picture?

Google made a big push in that direction starting in the Google+ era. IIRC at some point my fake names were rejected by Google and I had to change to more plausible fake names.

You can't fault regular people for falling into Big Tech's traps.