While I do believe Google is rolling out G+ micro-features at a relatively torrid rate, I believe this is due to fear of having no social network - and thereby, not symbolic of a winning innovation philosophy.

The proof will be in the API - will it be open and uncapped?

Will the API usher in a halcyon wave of innovation?
Like the early days of Twitter?

In those early days, people pivoted and built Twitter far beyond what Twitter itself dreamed.

Done well, G+ will become the grandaddy of all open platforms (replacing search itself), as circles become open, public/private semantic knowledge objects.

Done poorly, G+ will be something Google "owns", both shadowing and even crimping off innovation, via monopoly market leverage.

I do NOT believe Google strives to do no evil.

I believe Google is inexorably going down the path of IBM and Microsoft - by abusing this power, rather than constantly re-inventing via pure innovation.

Google will only make history if G+ becomes the open semantic object platform which replaces the tattered, crappy Internet we know now.

Circles hold the potential to open knowledge itself as a collaboration making G+ an infinite platform, an object/network platform larger than the entire Internet we have now.

I do not believe Google knows how to do this.

I believe instead Google will choose to "grind out dollars", like IBM has done for 30 years, by sucking the safer teat called monopoly power.

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