The thing is that Google is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't. It is obviously damned if it just allows Facebook to cruise to victory. That was the co

The thing is that Google is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't. It is obviously damned if it just allows Facebook to cruise to victory. That was the consensus about what was going to happen before the launch of Google+ last year. But it is also damned if it fights back with all the resources at its disposal. Either the goliath is being mocked for losing to David, or it is being attacked for actually giving David quite a beating. Moreover, in this particular case, Google doesn't have full indexing access for Facebook and Twitter (Twitter revoked access to the firehose sometime ago). So if they really want to play rope-a-dope, Google could use this to get FB and Twitter to give up indexing rights. Yet without Plus and SPYW, Google wouldn't have had any negotiating leverage with FB/Twitter to get those indexing rights.