I don't think that Google is especially slow in this area (e.g. they've been very responsive when mega-posts by very popular people were causing a bunch of nois

I don't think that Google is especially slow in this area (e.g. they've been very responsive when mega-posts by very popular people were causing a bunch of noise). Instead, I think it's because Google is trying to do a bunch of different things that need engineering cycles. When Google+ launched, people wanted first-class integration with Google Apps. People has also been clamoring for business/entity pages, not just personal pages. Those are both important and will take some time. There's just a lot to do, even for a service that's only a few weeks old.