Google+ needed to establish a core group of users who (a) weren't associated with Google, and (b) liked their offering better than Facebook, and (c) were in a space that Facebook would have trouble taking over. Games was prime territory, because Facebook fucked it up by letting Zynga be its tapeworm for so long. If we could show caution and attention to quality in this space, people would have been more likely to trust us in a time when they were (much moreso than now) upset with Facebook.

U.S. Facebook engagement was actually dropping in 2011 and the Zynga games were the reason why. People hated those games.

Google+ could have gotten some more air time with that idea. What they did with it, I can't predict. Sometimes, more air time means not crashing; sometimes, it just means crashing later. It would have had a chance with Real Games, though, and I'll take "a chance" over "no chance" any day of the week.

Anyway, I'm glad that Google lost. A closed-allocation company with stack ranking deserves to get beaten. So there.