I always thought Google missed a perfect opportunity when they released Google+, they should have created a new open protocol for social media instead of another platform, something like RSS feeds for blogs. Then people could host their "pages" anywhere they want and still own their own data. The protocol would allow the aggregation of comments, likes etc. Google has a vested interest in keeping the web open to protect their indexing/search business and they have the industry weight to force new standards. Instead of course they opted to create another platform...