[Thirdegree]

This is what it comes down to. If you follow uninteresting people, you'll have an uninteresting front page. If you follow no people, you'll have an empty front page. If you put a tiny bit of effort in, you'll have a decent front page.

[fidotron]

Not remotely true. For example, even if you did then the "Share what's new" and "You may know" panels cover around 40% of the actual content area available once you've already got rid of the giant bar at the top and empty spaces at the sides. This is on top of their OCD defying love of spamming notifications. And if you have the misfortune to use it to access some of their developer channels, well the noise level in them is mind boggling.

Compare and contrast with FB, which is almost information overload, but it's got the immediate hooks of who's online, what the latest changes are and a few items from the feed all there on the page at the beginning. It also loads a lot faster, while G+ is noticeably slow even on decent machines.