See "Pump up (or down) the volume!" here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/google-few-big-improv...
> Culturally, it feels like walking into a religious school.
Your Google+ is made up of who you Circle. Just like the parties you go to are made up of the people who are at the parties you go to. If yours feels a certain way, it is because of who you Circle, and who you share posts with.
> It was familiar because I had written it. I didn't see any attribution, though, let alone a link to the story.
Rohit Shrivastava was a bad actor, in this case. Plagiarism is a terrible problem, and it's childish of you to blame Google+ for it. It is very easy to correctly link to an article, or share it. I agree that you have legitimate usability problems in many of the versions of Google+ that you used, but Rohit intentionally plagiarized you. You don't want attribution, you want links - that's understandable. Encourage people to use the tool the way it was intended to be used, don't blame the tool for existing.
> Google thought I would prefer to click through Google+ to find my article than to go straight to it.
Google thought that you and your friends are more interesting to you than the unwashed internet. In general, I think that's the correct choice. If I search "Steve Smith," I probably care a lot more about my friend, than any of the other Steve Smiths on the internet.
> One comment (to which Google+ allows no way to link)
I can't link to comments on your site either, Jon.
> Hoops like reading the article?
Hoops like Disqus, which you use allow people to comment.
> All this personalization and real-time stuff surely helps Google organize its content, but it's breaking search.
No, it's not. It's combining multiple searches into one interface. Searching your Google+ friends is one aspect of what a person could possibly want to search for. It sounds like you don't want to search the people you've Circled, and what they say. Other people do. If you want to search the internet with as little personalization as possible, your best bet is to open an incognito window.
> Remember when it was "minimal?" This is what it looks like now:
Look at your own site, Jon. No, seriously - go back and look at it for a moment. Sites got rich, with lots of content.
> But Google is different. Google used to be about organizing the world's information. It was a service to the entire Web. But this social tangent is changing that.
No, it's not. It's an outreach of that. It's a recognition that your view of the people that you know, and what they think, and how they're talking, is information - information that they're trying to help you organize, if you wish to use their tools. If you wish to use Google News. If you wish to use Android. If you wish to use Google+.
> Thanks to the Scoble effect, I have 8,000 encirclements on Google+. It creeps me out, because I don't know why I'm encircled by all these people, and I don't really get what they're talking about most of the time.
There are people who want to know if you say anything publicly. If you don't want to say anything publicly, don't.
> I changed it, because my informal language gave trolls too much ammunition to make a distracting non-point.
Trolls?
Do you want people to care what you say, or don't you? Whose job is it to make sure that people think you're saying what you mean to say?
> Google+ Hates The Internet
Who is the troll? No, seriously - please define the word troll such that it includes the people who pointed out how ridiculous it was for you to say "because now I know Google is showing different Internets to different people", but excludes you, when you say "Google+ Hates The Internet."
> I hate Google+.
That's unfortunate. I wish it was a valuable tool for you, to help you organize how you're sharing content with people you know. If it's not, then oh well. My mom hates email. If she wrote an article like yours about how email is ruining cursive, she'd have a valid point. But the world is moving forward - and social interactions on the internet are going to spread everywhere. The only question is, what tools are we going to want to use?
Again, you have legitimate complaints about sharing links on some platforms. I hope they get fixed, over time. But your other complaints strike me as either being your own fault for how you used the tool, other people's fault for doing the same bad things that people have been doing forever, or minor differences of opinion about usability... or just lamenting the decline of cursive.