If Google+'s long game equates to simply integrating with other Google services then I fail to see how it is brilliant.
Facebook is largely an image sharing network to communicate with friends and family, while you use many google services such as a calendar, gmail, docs, and groups for work and networking and not necessarily just friends and family. Facebook will arguably never be something i use professionally (aside from promotions), while Google+ is something i already use professionally and could easily use instead of facebook socially.
and then you will see how this is an amazing strategy.
edit: to be fair, it does use data. a whole 5MB tying it in near last place with the stock News and Weather widget. Though that also includes the data used for all of my searches, including my voice based searches from the app.
In short, I have nothing to prove. The battery life on my unsupported, Google branded phone has been poor from day one, as has the other Android devices that I have owned. Google now in my experience has added to the load and not provided me with anything that I consider useful. It's as much a gimmick as Siri, which has the same issues but is marginally less needy.
This is why the guy who designed this Google+ plan (Vic Gundotra) is where he is (at Google) and you are still a commentator in a public forum. You need some long-term vision, bro.
In this he is hardly alone, as a spokesman for a major corporation: but Google used to be better than that, and Google especially used to be a place where the top brass would tell the truth internally. It was a place where any Googler could speak up on a Friday company meeting and ask pointed questions and expect to get a real answer. Not so with Vic Gundotra: he bullshits internally just as hard as he does externally. You can't crack him; no matter how obvious his boosterism for G+, he never stops grinning and blustering and insisting that everything is awesome. It is severely off-putting.