They actually do owe him something, like being the evangelist for their platform. Scoble did do free marketing for G+ (on every place he is/was - I know this from Quora, for example).

At least Google could have asked the top users on G+ before releasing this. Is that hard to do? You suppose not to alienate your users, especially when something you are competing against (Facebook) is already established and you want those users.