Earlier quoted context omitted.
I completely agree. Google+ was meant to enhance all of Google’s products, adding social features. What Google seem to be doing is the opposite.
Google+ is first and foremost meant to be a serious competitor to Facebook, but hasn't been able to overcome Facebooks gigantic lead in the network effects. But Google really, really wants to break into that market. Now what's happening is simply that they're sacrificing their less profitable services in order to force people to start using Google+, in an attempt to get over that network effect threshold.
Complete nonsense. Google aren't competing with Facebook directly at all! What they are doing is making Google+ the backend for any person to person interaction across their services. Instead of caring about massive amounts of features, they're just enabling all of their existing products, slimming and integrating them where possible.
If people can't be bothered to open an app and tap on the screen a few times then really nobody should be aiming at that market. Wanting a system where you just mash a button on your phone and it magically works is detrimental to actual useful features.
