Tell me a single good social app from Google. I'll wait. It's not like they didn't try, but all of them seem to suffer from the design by committee syndrome.
They have tried to launch at least 2 of their own, and both flopped hard.
Youtube is successful coz of google infrastructure not google decisions/methodology.
Now Google is trying to move Youtube into becoming a hollywood-lite experience and providing major support to entrenched hollywood celebs like will smith/brie larson(they even bypassed monetization policies for larson - her first video launched with full monetisation in play)
Orkut: stagnated and killed
G+: design by committee as you said
YT: acquired but the social aspects are down the drain
We can complain about FB and Zuckerberg as much as we want but they knew how to evolve the network and keep the users
It's like Google forgot that a social network needs to be social. Limiting how many people could get on G+ created hype for sure, but whenever someone got a invite, they realized none (or very few) of their friends were on it, and quickly forgot about it.
The slow rollout approach worked for GMail because your friends didn't need GMail for it to work for you.
Edit: Oh, I forgot the one staring me in the face—Youtube! It's no less of a social network than TikTok.
Google is completely incapable of coming up with their own successful social network.