Google.

Microsoft has had their finger on the pulse of business technology for a long time. Apple has their finger on the pulse of the consumer market. Both know their place, and thrive because of it. To the author's point - Google is trying to blend those two markets, and IMHO it waters down the value of their offerings.

I frankly don't understand why some people are seemingly outraged with G+ and are trying to pin everything they perceive as wrong with google on its mere existence. I don’t see how G+ has effected search quality in any negative way, if SPYW is the issue here then it can be toggled off, and as far as I can see that is that.

The other point of contention seems the assumption that it’s not needed and thus it's being forced upon us, but the need for it is so clear that these questions strike me as insincere: 90% of G+ purpose is getting users to signup and create profiles then have these profiles manifest in the thumbnail pictures across Google’s products, whether they be commenting on Blogger, youtube, or any of their app stores, or clustering articles around the same author in search results. This sort of tech blog fodder of “Google is trying to compete with X and thus are destroying themselves” is the stuff of linkbait nonsense I wish would go away.