Google Plus Isn't About Social Networking. It's About Tracking Your Every Move Online

I'm on Blogger and Gmail, so I've long bemoaned the ubiquity of the Google overlords. As yet though, I'm not ready to junk these services. And as it turns out, Google's banking on the same sentiments among millions of Americans.

At the New York Times, "The Plus in Google Plus? It's Mostly for Google":

Google says the information it gains about people through Google Plus helps it create better products — like sending traffic updates to cellphones or knowing whether a search for “Hillary” refers to a family member or to the former secretary of state — as well as better ads.

“It’s about you showing up at Google and having a consistent experience across products so they feel like one product, and that makes your experiences with every Google product better,” Mr. [Vice President Bradley] Horowitz said.

Thanks to Plus, Google knows about people’s friendships on Gmail, the places they go on maps and how they spend their time on the more than two million websites in Google’s ad network. And it is gathering this information even though relatively few people use Plus as their social network. Plus has 29 million unique monthly users on its website and 41 million on smartphones, with some users overlapping, compared with Facebook’s 128 million users on its website and 108 million on phones, according to Nielsen.

The company has also pushed brands to join Plus, offering a powerful incentive in exchange — prime placement on the right-hand side of search results, with photos and promotional posts...