Google+ has taken off. It's just not a booming social network for friends like Facebook is. In that regard, Twitter hasn't taken off either. I'm not trying to

Google+ has taken off. It's just not a booming social network for friends like Facebook is. In that regard, Twitter hasn't taken off either. I'm not trying to build a strawman here, but people judge Plus and Twitter by the wrong metric. Facebook is not the only model of how to run a social network. Google+ is a website for professional connections with selectivity based on who will see what, precisely because there are so many different types of relationships available. Facebook is literally just for friends (and should be). They're doubling down on it because users are using it, it's showing itself to be a better product. And - it's gaining traction without Google having to resort to the sort of advertising that Microsoft is doing with Bing. It's much more organic. But I digress - my comment here was specifically in response to the many comments I've read disparaging Google for its handling of Reader. I agree with you that Google has a tendency to merge products into semi-androgyny. But I also think this is a good thing. Google is slowly limiting its product selection while maximizing effort into each product. There may be some kinks to work out, but I believe that the basic philosophy of quality over quantity is there. And, honestly, products like Reader and Feedburner are so multifarious and down the pipeline that without a solid base of paying customers Google could never hope to improve them substantially. In fact, they haven't really been improved substantially. I believe that while Google could improve the way they're doing it, it will be a net win for them to consolidate services into more feature-rich products they can devote exponentially more attention to.