When "social" was a hot new thing, Google suddenly wanted to be Facebook, and started making all of their products part of Google+, whether it made sense or not.
Google+ required having a public profile with a real name. Gmail/calendar/docs users who were tricked into activating plus, but didn't comply, got banned or forced to make a real name profile. Merging of Hangouts, Orkut, Blogger, YouTube comments, and Play Store reviews into the same "social network" made no sense. It was a blatant move to inflate user numbers, at cost of annoying users of the other services, who didn't sign up for a me-too Facebook. That was the first time when Google became uncool.
Google+ required having a public profile with a real name. Gmail/calendar/docs users who were tricked into activating plus, but didn't comply, got banned or forced to make a real name profile. Merging of Hangouts, Orkut, Blogger, YouTube comments, and Play Store reviews into the same "social network" made no sense. It was a blatant move to inflate user numbers, at cost of annoying users of the other services, who didn't sign up for a me-too Facebook. That was the first time when Google became uncool.