You've inadvertently summed up everything wrong with google and google+. Somewhere google lowered the bar for its products to "don't do something too bad" instead of "build remarkable things."

Google+ may not be bad per se, but it's far from exceptional. When you take something that isn't exceptional and begin forcing it on your users for the sake of strategy, I'll make a bet that it hurts your company long term. Of course, when you build something exceptional(such as gmail), you don't have to shove it onto your users because you've crazy inbound demand.