I think your comment about "not coercive" is insightful.Thanks. That's one of the biggest changes I've seen. Your comments are interesting (of course, no way to know if you are who you claim to be, though, similarly for myself).
Larry's fear of Facebook.
I've written multiple times on G+ why Google should be focused on Amazon, not FB. Social is ultimately ephemeral. The evaporative cooling effect always kicks in. Given G+'s lack of effective filtering, sooner there than elsewhere. I've posted far too often to Shimrit Ben-Yair (G+'s product manager) on aspects of this.
The other trend I see is self-hosting / distributed services becoming viable. See FreedomBox as an example. A few years off yet, but it'll be a game-changer.
That damn red alerting bell
One of the first things that lead me to segregate my G+ activities from "everything else I do on the Web". I've actually removed the bell via user-side CSS (repeatedly, thanks to repeated CSS class-name changes) from other Google properties. I ultimately found it was easier to 1) not use them when logged in (so: in another browser/session), or 2) use other services (DDG, OpenStreetMaps, FixYT.com / Vimeo, etc.).
if Google+ loses, Google itself will become entirely irrelevant a short time later.
He's wrong. However if he keeps cramming G+ down peoples' throats, he'll keep encouraging exploration of other servcies. Particularly among the more technically literate and thought leaders.
I don't know if Google will change, but unless Larry wakes up and realises Facebook isn't going to kill his business, I think it will continue down the current path for a long time yet.
Sad. In particular, even FB doesn't suffer disadvantage that it's sucking so much else of my information online (mail, video, search), though FB itself is pretty invasive (NB: I don't have a personal Facebook account).
As others have noted, the fear-driven strategy is highly reminiscent of Microsoft, and is among the factors which killed Microsoft's brand among end-users (the OEMs and business partners loved them so long as the money kept flowing).