[brador]

For the record I consider Facebooks UI dated. It's ripe for a serious competitor to come along and take a slice.

GMail by itself is fine. I do nothing that would cause it to be shutdown and I have not heard of anyones gmail being shutdown by using it. What I do have a problem with is taking on additional services which add little value to me personally, yet massively increase the risk of my very important email account being seemingly randomly chosen for closure with little chance of appeal. Google had one chance to win everyone over and it failed.

To be perfectly blunt about it, I think Microsoft could actually do it. If they put together a great new-tech team and pulled something together I think they could be a serious competitor to Facebook. Embed within win8 with no BS and I would sign-up in a flash. It's funny how its come full circle, but right now, Microsoft are the only tech company I would trust not to delete my important work at seemingly random and to respect my privacy and that of my data.

[ajross]

With all due respect, that makes no sense whatsoever. You're saying you trust Google never to shut down your gmail account under any circumstances imaginable, except for the case where you get your name wrong in google+, in which case you totally don't trust them at all and would never recommend using them.

... wat? Either you trust Google or you don't. What does Google+ have to do with it (other than being the handle on which you've hung your argument)?