I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding of how Google operates. They want to prevent lock-in, lock-in by anybody, because if the information is open, the

I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding of how Google operates. They want to prevent lock-in, lock-in by anybody, because if the information is open, they can 'organize it and make it accessible and useful' (their mission statement). Take their two most successful non-search products, Android and Chrome. Both of these are Open Source, and are explicitly positioned not directly to make money for Google, but rather to offer a highly functional, feature-rich and free product so that nobody else in the same market can try and lock consumers into their product without looking lacklustre by comparison. Thus far Chrome has been extremely successful in this regard, Android moderately so - but that's Google's modus operandi throughout their business, and there's no reason to suspect that Plus will be anything different. They just want to make sure they can search it - they don't care who controls it.