Sorry, Google+, We Still Won't Come to Your Party

By now, it's a depressingly familiar business tactic from Google. The search giant changes a feature somewhere in its arsenal of services to make that service integrate more tightly, and annoyingly, with the social network Google+. Sign-ups are required. Engagement is mandated. Then Larry Page gets to claim increased Google+ user numbers on the next quarterly earnings call — perhaps in the hope that having those numbers widely reported will in itself create an inevitable, Facebook-like rush to join the service.

At the end of 2013, it was YouTube comments, which now require a Google+ login. On Thursday, it was the turn of Gmail, that storied, highly respected, 11-year old free email service, to be saddled with a feature nobody wanted. Gmail users can now be contacted by anyone, anywhere on Google+ (they have to add you to their Circles first, but that's a formality) Read more...