You look at Apple and you see similar things, difference being, Apple mostly gets away with it because their fan-base sees the reasoning behind it; i.e., killin

You look at Apple and you see similar things, difference being, Apple mostly gets away with it because their fan-base sees the reasoning behind it; i.e., killing an app for an instant snap feature using the volume buttons, but then releasing the same feature themselves. Google's fanbase (or fanboys of Apple's) won't tolerate this kind of bait and switch. In this case it's "you said you were about freedom and here you go censoring us". The truth is, Apple does what it does for good reasons and most people are on-board with that logic. So companies like Google will try and mimic Apple's policies and how they stand behind them. You can see that some levels of censorship increase the overall quality of content and relationships to that content. To that end, Google hopes to create a higher-quality atmosphere like the one observed on the App Store. Google hasn't made the case, for better or worse, as to why G+ has a different approach to the way the service is used by us. Or why these terms ripple down to other services, like Gmail and search. Apple has had that conversation with it's customers many, many times and did so unapologetically. Google wants to do no evil, but on paper it shows that they must.