Thanks for sharing your perceptions of Google Friend Connect. Like you and several of the other commenters, I have trust issues. I joined the community on this site based upon my trust relationship with you more than anything else.
Like everyone I am already drowning in Twitter, Friendfeed, Google Reader and email rivers of data. I have all but eliminated any partial feeds that I subscribe to and click though to other sites from Google Reader only occasionally. It seems to me that Google Friend Connect is going to try to get us to add more visits to individual sites in addition to maintaining those “centralized” rivers. That imposes increased time costs on each of us.
I can see a value add from the publisher’s point of view if the site is advertising supported or items are sold. Since that isn’t the case with this site, I am still questioning the value add we will derive from this over what is already available via the other tools we already use.
I guess time will tell.