I think you are too emotionally involved or don't play poker and missed the reference. If Google+ is now a feature that divisions can choose to integrate or not, it's not table stakes.
No silo of Google gets to choose whether to be secure or not or what level of scalability or whether they'll decide to be profitable or not.
Google didn't know who you were, who you followed, who you shared with, and so Google+ looked a lot like a product to you.