Google first teased Ice Cream Sandwich at its developer conference in May. (Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com)

Images surfaced late Thursday afternoon that purport to show an unreleased new version of the Android operating system, codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich. The leaks first surfaced on Android enthusiast sites Android Police and RootzWiki.

From what we’re seeing, the images aren’t a radical departure from the most current release of Android for phones, version 2.3.4, code-named Gingerbread. What we’re seeing are minor tweaks — blue accents in the user interface, a redesigned version of the notific...

One of my favorite moments in Franz Kafka’s The Trial is shortly after the protagonist Josef K is placed under arrest for an unnamed offense. The men notifying him of his arrest don’t cuff him or take him to jail. They just tell him proceedings are underway and that he’ll learn everything in due course.

The only thing K can think to do is present the men his identity papers, but all he can find to show them is his bicycle license: “If this is a farce, he was going to play along.”

That’s what Google’s identity policy for Google+ has felt like over the last weeks: a farce. It has been genuinely ...