People blame Google+ for that because Google branded all of that as Google+. At the time, Google+ invaded and occupied almost all Google properties, including YouTube (which was independent enough to resist part), Blogger (which resisted some), Reader (destroyed solely to remove Google+ competition), Hangouts, even Google OAuth
That doesn't make prevent the social network with the same name from being good though, although ironically the fact that it never became as popular as Facebook might have been part of why it stayed so nice for so long.
