Yes, exactly this. I was fine with my Google Account; now I have a Google Social Networking Boondoggle. And the rare times G+ makes a difference in my use of other services, the net effect has been worse (I'm still not over the YouTube thing)
I was fine with my Google account, I am finer with my G+ account. In my view, this makes the Google ecosystem better unified and from a lead generation perspective, more like Facebook.
What? You thought Google or Facebook were software companies? No, those are marketing and advertising companies. Lead generation is their business. The free software is just the foot in the door. And a nice foot it is.
You should be over the 'Youtube thing'. Many Google services employ commenting/voting/rating etc, handling these in different, separate siloed systems makes no sense. G+ makes a great deal of sense that its detractors are unwilling to admit.
As for the Youtube commenting system which all those who want to be derisive about G+ are quick to point to, they fail to mention how Youtube comments weren't that great to begin with and that the G+ comments they refer to are the ones rolled out immediately after the change, they omit mentioning and don't account for the numerous iterations the system received since then, and they haven't bothered to check on the comments situation since then because it would destroy their strawman arguments.
I can assure you that I still follow the same YouTube channels I was following before and my complaints about the comment system are very well-informed. I will concede that comment threading is somewhat better, and it's nice that people can actually post links now, but there's still plenty to hate. Hell, here's just what's annoyed me in the last day:
I can't keep myself signed in. Well, kind of; g+ UI was designed by trolls, so what actually happens is that I appear to be signed in until I actually try to do anything, at which point I'm asked to sign in. Sometimes I even sign in, try to check my notifications, and am asked to sign in again.
Anytime I post a comment "Also post to Google+" is pre-checked. I can't make it unchecked by default.
I have had a YouTube account for years. Since the changeover, I receive more spam from random strangers every week than I did over the rest of the account's lifetime combined. I now also get newsletter spam from YouTube itself (I'm now looking at an email entitled "Well... these love songs are awkward on YouTube", like that is something I would ever want). On the bright side, I clicked the unsubscribe link and unlike the last three times, it didn't throw a server error, so I'll see if it takes.
Despite never flagging any of the above as spam, my Gmail spam filter has started catching my subscription emails as spam. That is, the legitimate communications from YouTube that I specifically asked for are the ones getting killed, as opposed to the scummy newsletters I was autosubscribed to and the new spam vector that is g+.
If this stuff seems minor, keep in mind that it's all the fault of something that I didn't ask for, never wanted, and actively tried to avoid.
> Many Google services employ commenting/voting/rating etc, handling these in different, separate siloed systems makes no sense.
Why doesn't that make sense? Is a YouTube user naturally a Google Drive user? A Gmail user naturally a Blogger user? This seems to only make sense to Google, and not their users.
I don't know how much overlap there was between YouTube users and Google account users, but Google merged the two simply to boost the profile of Google+. People who wanted to comment on YouTube videos with their Google+ pals and their real identities were already doing that -- on Google+. The forcing of Google+ on YouTube offered no discernible benefit to YouTube users that could not have been offered while maintaining YouTube as a distinct social network.
As a Google+ user, the utter disregard towards YouTube and its distinct identity severely annoyed me.
It's not just the 'Youtube thing' (as derisive as that sounds), it's that G+ has supplanted many services I used to use and enjoy. So now I have fewer services with constant nag screens prompting me to use something in which I have no interest.
So net result of the G+ 'experience' is that I lose services and have the quality of those that remain impaired.