A product doesn't win in the market by not being offensive in some way, but by providing something people want. Google+ didn't commit many of the sins of Facebook, but it also didn't have a compelling use case other than "I hate facebook"

And I say that as someone that doesn't have Facebook account.

A tangent.

> The privacy settings were constantly being reset.

True. What privacy-minded Facebook critics often miss is that privacy settings seem to have been constantly reset towards "more private" mode. Hell, at this point Facebook is starting to get really annoying with those recurring reminders about visibility of my post. I post all-public because I like it that way, I hate the constant nagging about switching to more private mode.

Before a few years ago they were being reset to less private.