I'm talking about the other responses to the OP. Lately, if Google is mentioned on HN in a story, you are pretty much guaranteed that several of the off-topic responses will be either something about PRISM, Reader, or moving to DDG/FastMail, even if the story, for example, isn't even about PRISM or politics. Reader Derangement Syndrome is another, with people seriously proposing in some comments that Gmail is a shutdown risk given Reader.

G+ is Google's centralized system for single-sign-on and account profiles. It used to be confusingly distributed over multiple services, now it is unified. Oh, and it has a news feed associated on it at plus.google.com that you can totally ignore if you want.

Some of the reactions to this are way over the top. I guess I'm burning karma points by posting this, but it is an annoying trend.

It's not that Gmail is a shutdown risk - that's deranged yes, it's Gmail IMAP people are worried about.

And how would you suggest that he reply to a growing trend that occurs as an aggregate across hundreds of disparate comments?

He could reply to them, or be silent. I don't know why it's so deranged to "take your toys and go home" aka stop using a service (even loudly), if you find that a change has been made that is a dealbreaker for you.

The defense that you can only half-participate in g+ is not much of a defense because 1) people may not want to support changes of that sort with their patronage lest it continue as a trend, and/or 2) the thing being objected to was a forced escalation of participation - why would a user assume this would be the last and that half-participation in g+ will remain an option?

Perhaps observing this phenomenon should lead him to consider that there might be some substance to these critiques, and not just dismiss them all out of hand as some sort of "derangement".