Google+, a Disappointment With a Purpose - Digits - WSJ

Lots of speculation about what's next for Google+ this week

"Despite its shortcomings, Google+ helped Google accomplish important strategic goals, and is helping it do battle with Facebook.

For one, it encouraged millions of users to establish Google accounts. Thanks to a controversial change to Google’s privacy policy, these accounts now connect Google’s various services, from Gmail to Google Maps to search. That helps the company personalize those services, letting people search for their own photos via Google for instance.

More important to Google’s business, it helps the company track logged-in users. That’s important to the advertisers that drive Google’s business, who want to know whether the user who saw an ad on a desktop computer later purchased the item from a smartphone."

Google+, a Disappointment With a Purpose - Digits - WSJ