That's just the sort of element change that looks distinctive, and makes a redesign appear appealing, but almost certainly tests horribly under actual use.

As another response notes, G+ is absolutely horrible at its content-to-navigation space allocation. The more so as most of the navigation elements are styled as "fixed", and won't move.

I pretty much always view the site with an editor open to pick off the most annoying of these features. I'm working on a Stylish script.