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Word coming out is that one person was, just this week, put on an unexpected 60-day PIP for sharing opinions of the Real Names policy on internal G+. It's likely that he's been set up to fail. If this is accurate, and I believe it is, there'll be more to tell in late December.
It's worth noting that individual Googlers have shown nothing but support for this person as the story has developed.
There've been a lot of middle- to high-performers put on PIP the past couple weeks. I wondered if this was what that's about.
How are you finding this out? I can't imagine PIPs would be advertised widely... (I'm immune to all this because I quit between RNCH and the Plus launch.)
Let me guess, blowback from RNCH? Bad news.
I wrote a Slashdot submission about exactly this recently: http://slashdot.org/submission/1778830/google-is-gagging-use...
For me, I want to find out why it is happening, because as I mentioned in the Slashdot submission, it is "ironic that these anonymity requirements are needed to talk about nymwars". I am not for real name policies, but I do believe problems like this needs to be fixed.
Unfortunately for your Slashdot submission, it's hard to get people outside Google to take the gagging seriously, because of course people who are inside Google won't talk about it because they don't want to be fired. (And those people inside Google who _will_ talk to say "no, there's nothing like that" are the ones who are un- or mis-informed, and thus are willing to talk freely.)
BTW, I am posting this submission not just to get people to take the specific case seriously, but to get people to take the general problem seriously. Because while I am not for real name policies, I do want the problems with using real names to be fixed if possible.
"First, a note about political firings at Google. They're always made to look like performance-based terminations. This is actually a nice thing to do, because it gives the targets time to find other jobs. In Silicon Valley, a 60-day PIP is more than enough severance to bridge to the next gig."
Not that it excuses that the current anti-discrimination laws are fundamentally flawed. In fact, I am not sure this kind of law are even a good idea. Hiring is an art, not a science. But that is a different topic.
https://twitter.com/Skud/status/129413764356382720
"also heard a rumour that someone within google was banned from internal g+ for using a nickname, and may treat it as a discrimination matter"