This article hit the nail on the head. It doesn't matter if G+ hasn't "beaten" Facebook yet (or ever). Google are clearly playing the long game here, and they have deep pockets... they will continue to integrate G+ into their other products, continue to iterate and improve and continue to grow G+.
There are some things G+ desperately needs to make it as useful as it could be, such as a complete API and support for OpenSocial apps. But I expect they'll get it all nailed over time.
And it really is creeping up on us! At work we have moved over from WebEx meetings to Google Hangouts, which we picked up because we moved our business email and calendar to Google Apps... It's kind of scary how dominant they are.
I wish people would stop comparing G+ and Facebook. Even though Google+ has a social network app, G+ is really the identity and behavior-tracking glue of a horizontally integrated system. I wouldn't be surprised if G+ the social network remained a niche product and was viewed as a failure, while G+ the identity and behavior aggregator became a shashing success.
I agree completely. The integration between G+ and all of the other Google apps - particularly on my android phone - is really, really slick. Great stuff. Even if I never posted on G+ I'd still like having it around just for the contact management it gives.
Here's what I don't really get about google+: what's in it for me as a user? "Horizontal integration" makes a lot of sense for google, but as a user I get nothing from it. At best, it creeps me out a bit.
The entire reason I refuse to sign up for google+ is explicitly because google is behind it. I don't dislike the company (they're fine), I just don't want all of my stuff tied together in the way that google VP so gleefully describes.
I'm trying to switch from G+ to FB and finding Facebook way too obtrusive. And that's annoying and even offending. Why am I getting tons of absolutely irrelevant "friend" suggestions, which mainly consist of unknown sexy girls? That's really cheap manipulation. And those offerings like "mark checkbox to send FB invitation to _all_ contacts in your mail service". Meh...
G+ and Facebook are different things even though people do compare them.
I get different stuff in my g+ stream compared to facebook, they're targeting g+ for something more than just a social network, it is an integrator, yet another cool feature of the whole google ux.
People are used to having a Facebook id. They go there to hang out with their friends or their old buddies. They're not used to needing to log in to search google, and I doubt they are going to want to. Google is increasingly making you need to have a google account to do stuff, but I find that it is making me use the services less and less. For instance, I use youtube less now.
Google+ may well be successful, but having learned my lesson with Facebook, I'm going the other way. I'm slowly shutting down all my gmail accounts and migrating it to my own domains and servers. My app engine app is going away, and my google apps accounts have migrated. Google docs etc, have been replaced with another solution.
Eventually, and pretty soon, I'll have no more google accounts.
I'm stuck with Google Mail, but I too am moving away slowly from Google. I hate how Google makes it difficult to have more than one account. Although this is mostly because my primary account is banned from YouTube (without explanation), and also from Google Play/Checkout/Wallet (failed debit card transaction??), and also from Google Checkout for Merchants (without explanation).
I hate being unable to buy Android apps :(
Edit: I just bought an email account from Namecheap.
In what way do you find Google makes it difficult to use multiple accounts at once? I've been blown away at how easy and comprehensive the multilogin support is, and am curious about how your experience was different.
YouTube makes it very difficult to use a different account to your main. I know other Google services are reasonable in this regard, though, but I don't really care about them.
I just click my username on the upper right of any YouTube page, and there's a "switch account" link. Do you not have one, or does it not work well for you somehow?
Interesting - I have the exact opposite experience. I was amazed at how easily I could integrate multiple accounts in to one interface and switch between them seamlessly. But it sounds like you had an unusual (I hope!) experience, so that could be causing it.
Very similar to my experience. I hate the creeping "accountization" of Google services - especially since they started to auto-login into YouTube.
The problem I see with Google is, that the switching costs are really low and there is not a lot of lock-in of the users. This is something they are trying to improve with Plus, but if a better/more convenient email provider comes along, I would be out in a second. Plus this would mean my log ins over all sites would be dropping to maybe checking Plus or YouTube once every two week or so.
I'm doing the same thing. I don't like how Google is forcing Google Plus on me through more and more of their services. And I don't like having so much personal information with one company who is using it to target advertising. I actually wrote a blog post about it yesterday[0].
I don't mind using Google Apps because I use it exclusively for business purposes. My Apps accounts don't really contain any personal information.
The last time I poked at it, ZoHo was surprisingly competitive on features (and for documents, features tend to matter. otherwise there are plenty of pastebins out there.) That said, that was a couple years ago. Google's has mostly stagnated / rewinded but got a cleaner interface and better collaborative editing, not sure what ZoHo has done.
There are some things G+ desperately needs to make it as useful as it could be, such as a complete API and support for OpenSocial apps. But I expect they'll get it all nailed over time.