On the other side of the coin, I see it as a cynical marketing move specifically designed to appeal to nostalgia create the very impression you had, that they "maintain a sense of fun and a corporate attitude that allows fun hacks to make it to the world." Google is often successful at appealing to geek humor and ideals in order to gain fans, even as they do things that violate those ideals.

What, the barrel roll thing? I've gotta say, you're looking at it incorrectly.

It was implemented by a single engineer who thought it would be a humorous thing to do without considering marketing at all.

Or did you mean that them allowing this is the cynical marketing move? It'd make more sense, but I don't think I'd agree with it.

People who think they're making some kind of statement by refusing to state their gender.

Not necessarily. There are a number of legitimate ways that someone's online gender can be ambiguous.

For instance one person in my circles is male, has a long-established female online identity, and has stated a gender of "other".

For a different example, how about someone who is trans, has had hormones, but has not yet had the operation?

Buzz also gained millions of users in a short period of time.

Buzz also had millions of users.

Buzz was much more forced upon people though than this is.

Wrong, I care. I don't have any way of confirming it myself so his double-checking was appreciated.

You're comparing becoming a citizen in a foreign country to signing up with a social network? There are a hell of a lot more barriers to becoming a foreign citizen, such as physical location, than signing up for a social network and giving it all your personal data.

Google is a much bigger data-collecting, privacy-breaching behemoth than Facebook, so signing up with them should be an action that warrants thought.

It was a metaphor. I wasn't exactly saying that it was exactly the same. And yeah, it does warrant thought, but the whole point of this article is that when one site owns all your web apps, if you piss them off, you lose access to all of those at once. I'm wondering why people don't just not dick around. I've never gotten kicked/banned from anything by accident. Just don't post a picture of your ass on G+ and your docs will be fine.

Maybe this is true for US cit's. But if you think a bit more out of the box than just "States", the author has quite a point. Just look at what some gov'ts in less well of countries with regard to FoS now are doing in terms of monitoring People by "spying on" social networks. I think if you take the WWW (where world != only US), the issues the author raises do matter, and quite a lot. It might be much easier to reach a "state" where you get locked out of all your "eggs".

The transition is made in the first sentence of the third paragraph: "The problem with this rationale, however rosy it may seem, is that you’re simply moving from one internet juggernaut to another." He first explained the pros of Google+ and then moved onto the cons.

Yes, but since sites like Hacker News have been dutifully advertising Google+ non-stop since it came out, Google can release non-news and have it covered like it's news.

Perhaps. But we obviously do care about it, for whatever reason.

If you're looking for media that cater to people in the mainstream, there's always USA Today and Reader's Digest.

"Mainstream users don't care about Google+, if they've even heard of it."

that would probably come as a bit of a shock to my 40+ muggle friends on google+.

This is Hacker News, and you're upset that it has hacker-oriented news?

Does PG hold GOOG shares?

As far as I've seen he hasn't been posting any of these Google+ articles.

I was kidding.

Believe it or not, it is possible for Facebook to be lean and agile yet produce a less than compelling response to circles. Google's internal process has also been criticized before by other former employees, such as the infamous color survey. Your eagerness to dismiss an account from someone on the inside is a little weird and doesn't refute the points he made.