'voluntary'? That's rich. Google+ is the most rammed-down-your-throat product ever on the web.

You are upvoted even though I think you misread my opinion.

I wrote specifically about the "social network" part of it. Maybe I was a bit unclear but I meant the part where you can sort people into circles and share stuff with them. And I still think adding people to groups and sharing stuff with them are is voluntary?

The implementation of a common identity across Googles properties? That seemed to have been a smart idea mismanaged badly.

> I really really have a hard time understanding the google+ hate around here.

Because it's a baffling fucking mess.

I have several different accounts. G+ integration breaks those totally, leaking information to people I didn't want it leaked to; contacting people I didn't want to contact; making my different Google services much harder to use.

And what benefit do I get from it?

This is a real question: What does G+ actually give me?

Some of us, at least, pretty much hate all social networks.

> entirely voluntary google+ social network ... is a bit of a stretch. I believe the vast majority of users on Google+ were strongarmed in. Basically just by having a Google account that they used for anything (gmail, docs, youtube), suddenly a Google+ profile was created for them, and then things like their Android reviews, play store purchases, etc were being associated with the + profile.

Yes, I make all information about me available to public when I put it online at all, but I really don't want my every online impact fully traceable back to me and to one another without that being explicit intent. Google+ subversively does that to everything their users do, and it blows.

Last time I checked it was Facebook who retroactively would chane everything. Again and again. Last time with graph search.

G+ however weird it may sound comes off a lot nicer to me.