I remember Google+ and thought it was bad for the average person overall and I'm glad they shut it down for unrelated reasons.
Having the biggest social network sucking up personal data to feed the ad network is the reality we are in. Having Google with a larger collection of personal data linking everything to a large social network would have made things worse. Google+ forced real names which made facebook force real names. Google appstore and preinstalled apps you cannot remove force location data. Google obtaining your social graph leads down a dark path.
It was the best social network that existed, and before it shut down it had so gotten so much right that I think no others have matched anywhere near the complete feature sets.