[robertlagrant]

I don't really understand this. Don't you think search, mail, docs, maps, adsense, were products? What were the API platforms they were making up until G+?

To my recollection, G+ was actually pretty good at launch. It just was killed (or hobbled, for future killing) incredibly early for a network-effects, non-first mover product.

[ethbr1]

I'd disagree with parent a smidge and say Google turned evil when it became a platform.

When it was a disparate group of products... incentives were generally aligned with the users of those products.

When they began to look at themselves as a platform company (Google search-on-everything, Android, Chrome), that fundamentally broke and they started making sound-platform-business but user-hostile decisions.

So I guess the moral of that story is that platforms will make you rich, but you have to be very careful to enunciate your value priorities clearly to users. (E.g. Apple: "privacy"; Google: "openness"?)