People aren't going to abandon competitors just because Google offers a cheaper service. I don't think we know Larry Page well enough to adopt a cynical interpr

People aren't going to abandon competitors just because Google offers a cheaper service. I don't think we know Larry Page well enough to adopt a cynical interpretation of his time on stage. "It's pretty much well known" translates to, "this is the reasoning a lot of people have decided they like, it's entirely guesswork." The stated reason for Google+, from the introductory blog post (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/introducing-google-project-real-life.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/introducing-google-pr...), was, "In this basic, human way, online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it." If someone wants to make the claim that one of Google's motivations was also to make more ad revenue, I certainly wouldn't disagree. But, I think that at that stage of the company, Google's executives simply chose to compete with Facebook because of the at-the-time well-publicized problems people had with Facebook. I'd need to see some actual evidence, like statements from Google executives or insiders closely associated with the project, before I'd believe that Google+ was only about ad revenue. If that's Gruber's point, it would be a remarkably stupid one to make. I'd rather give him a little more credit than that.