Google+ gets a redesign

The problem is, that's not even the right approach. It's built on a faulty assumption - that "who" is the sole determinant of whether or not I'm interested in something. That's not even close to true, unfortunately. I have plenty of social-network connections for whom I value their posts on certain topics and have less-than-zero interest in what they have to say about other things. For example:

"I follow Bob, and I want to see Bob's posts on technical topics, but NOT Bob's posts on religion."

Or more generally:

"I follow all these people, but regardless of who posts what, I never want to see pictures of cats."

I'm just not sure it's solvable through the UI and that we may have to be quite harsh on what "noise" we let through and rely on "if it's important enough, it will find me". There's just too much data to consume otherwise.

I don't know, I think a solution that was 80% effective would be incredibly valuable. I don't see this as something that's "all or nothing."

And my personal take is that, in the case of G+, the Circles thing is a good start, but they need a way to specify "excludes." Whether those excludes should be explicitly defined by the user, or whether they can use machine learning to figure out what I don't want to see is an open question, granted. But I'd take some UI for specifying "exclude this topic" (while acknowledging there is some inherent fuzziness in this) in the meantime.

It is missing "Google". For me Google means plain flat interfaces to best-of-breed tools (search, maps, mail). Many of their new tools (Play, Google +) are trying to resemble an iPad app. That's not Google's DNA, maybe. (Only maybe, because Chrome is the one tool they made that have this sexy look while keeping, for me, the pure Google DNA.)

In fact, I think Google may, one day, want give up doing business things. Look, they have plenty of ad money coming in the safe for years. I won't say they don't deserve it but instead of paying very clever people trying to beat Facebook, trying to have a better ad model, scratching their head on how to place an icon on the left (or right? or top?) with which gradient to have the "best" interaction, or even trying to make AR glasses, they could just give up on these childish tasks and just become the real New University of the 21st.

Ok, it is off-topic, but think about it: so many great brains, with enough money to pay them. They could be teaching everyone many fields of Science, and beyond, for free. They could scratch their head on how to get more food for less water, and write about it. Each Googler would have to publish one thing every week, on their channel of choice. A central feed would list them. Free access to knowledge. That, would be grand. Nearly as grand as Wikipedia...