This specific article doesn't make too much sense, however, the grand mix up of everything (most notably bringing Android in from the cold) is the real elephant in the room, not G+. G+ was just a symptom of typical big company soviet style central planning which now seems to be par for the course in what was, during the golden era of technology growth, a shining beacon of libertarianism inside and outside the organisation.
Maybe Google x somehow does keep the magic spirit they used to have but there's a definite anti-user marketing droid led trend with everything from Hangouts to Maps that should be far more concerning than the G+ fallout.
EDIT: To add, what always killed me about G+ was it wasn't the Googly answer to the problem. What they should have done to counter FB was to get behind something like Diaspora (i.e. an open source federated social platform, where they happen to offer hosting for free if that's what you want), and encouraged something like Persona as the ID system. Basically take the oxygen away from FB, and provide a boost to the "open web" which they can index in the normal manner.
Maybe Google x somehow does keep the magic spirit they used to have but there's a definite anti-user marketing droid led trend with everything from Hangouts to Maps that should be far more concerning than the G+ fallout.
EDIT: To add, what always killed me about G+ was it wasn't the Googly answer to the problem. What they should have done to counter FB was to get behind something like Diaspora (i.e. an open source federated social platform, where they happen to offer hosting for free if that's what you want), and encouraged something like Persona as the ID system. Basically take the oxygen away from FB, and provide a boost to the "open web" which they can index in the normal manner.