[alecdbrooks]

>If Plus was an independent startup people would be crowning it the next Facebook and saying that Facebook better watch its back.

People have higher expectations for Google than for an unknown startup. Google has an audience of 425 million Gmail users [0] to market new services to, after all. It's unreasonable to expect every Google product to be Gmail, but that's where the bar's been set.

[0]: http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/28/gmail-now-has-425-million-u...

[habosa]

I agree that it should be easier for Google to get users than almost anyone else, but that doesn't mean that having X users is any less impressive because of how they were referred.