It definitely looks better when viewed as a screenshot or in a graphic design presentation. Of course actual usability is far worse, but nobody cares about that. Only how shiny it is. The people making the decisions on which design to go for are given screenshot or mockup presentations in 5 minutes and asked to choose which design to go for. They will always go for the shiniest one, and you end up with stuff like this.

There's some comment about the low attention span we force on executives by making them take 1000s of decisions per day that they aren't even experts in and rewarding them for it in all this.

... you honestly think Google has no analytics on whether or not design changes affect UX? And that they'd stick with a significantly worse-performing page?

They will only have numbers for the people that are actually using Google+. The millions that prefer other social networks may have different views on the G+ usability.

Somewhat counterintuitive... I mean Google knows better than relying on stills for what is interactive content, right?

I don't know, did they ever hire an Apple designer? Ah, no, they had a no-poach agreement. Perhaps they had to revert on poaching Pinterest designers, though.

> But Google+ used to be single column!

...

> but suddenly you needed to scroll up and down to be able to read both columns.

I guess many of us don't read any column in google plus, we just glance them and take a closer look at a few things.

... > I really wonder why they decided to change it.

I have a couple of reasons why they might have done it:

1.The focus is on lots of short-form (think twitterish).

2. Stacking smaller blocks sideways neatly lets you format posts themselves the same way in multiple screen resolutions.

Twitter is a darling it seems despite wasting most of my screen.

Google plus is hated for everything despite being IMO a better product both technically and design-wise.