[dredmorbius]

What hurts both G+ (and HN) is the absence of a specific blockquote markdown.

None of italicize everything quoted, "put quotes in quotes (especially for long passages)", nor > prefix quotes with a greater-than sign work particularly well IMO. Though I suppose they generally suffice.

[dublinben]

Blockquotes have been supported in markdown as the ">" prefix since the very beginning. It's a mystery that HN doesn't support it when even reddit does.

[dredmorbius]

Precisely my point. I've raised the issue specifically with Yonatan Zunger, and got a very typical Google NIH response.