Can Facebook do this? Can it guard your house while you are out? Google+ can, especially if you have two plus accounts. You don’t even need to be that much of a tech/Internet whiz to set it up either. The key ingredients are a video camera and the aforementioned dual Google+ accounts.

From there, it’s a really simple process, as indicated by by TechCrunch (via Lifehacker). Setting up your home (or other place of value) surveillance unit is really quite simple. All you have to do is put the video camera in your location of choice with one Google+ account, start a hangout, send your other Plus account a link to hangout, and bam: instant surveillance of the area you selected:

You will need two Google+ accounts to make this work — one for the camera side and another to view the stream. But that shouldn’t be that big of an issue. Simply start a Hangout on one side and then email yourself the URL. Once you’re at work, or wherever, just open the link to look through the other side of the portal.

You could even invite others to your Google+ hangout so they could take over the security duties, provided your friends would be satisfied watching your house do nothing all day.

There is an issue of inactivity on Google Hangouts, meaning you can’t just “set it and forget it.” If you aren’t interacting, or at least moving your mouse or other input device, you’ll be kicked out for being inactive. Granted, that’s a minor obstacle if home defense is your thing. It’s not that hard to move your mouse every once and a while.

Lifehacker has an image of the setup in action:

Are you worried the babysitter swiping drinks from the liquor cabinet? Or are you having a hard time figuring out which one of you lovable dogs is destroying your shoes? Google+ has a free option to pursue, provided you have a video camera set up in the area you want to watch.

You could probably wire up your entire domicile to this system, provided you had enough cameras and enough Google+ accounts.