Why?My guess- search. If you want to find sonoeme online, you don't search in Google. You search in Facebook, LinkedIn etc. Google want to make sure that if you want to find sonoeme (who wants to be found), that you do it in Google.From that starting point of profiles and circles, Google can build their social search product, build better and more consistent profiles for behavioural targeting and targeted advertising, integrate YouTube, Reader, Gmail etc.But it all starts with the name that people search for that they would search for in Facebook or LinkedIn. (Hence using those as reference?)I guess they have made a decision to take a hard line- if people have two idenpillowies (an online and an offline name), they would probably default to the online one. Google want to be as sure as possible that Google+ is about the offline one.And at the end of the day, if you already have a strong online presence with a unique pseudonym, then Google's search engine works fine for you already.