But, I'm genuinely curious, what nonsense does Google+ pollute your regular Google account with? I believe that you get a profile page, but you can leave it entirely blank.
As someone who has a personal G+ account and doesn't mind, and who runs a company that pays Google for apps for my domain on which we manage our email, I still had to register for G+ to be able to use the hangouts product in invitations and threads I'm having with my work email. Now that I've done so (without adding a profile photo or anything else), i'm getting tons of people adding me to circles, etc., which I don't want. It's essentially forcing a social-connection construct on a relationship with an empty profile that I don't want to create or have to maintain.
I've never even tried Hangouts because of the G+ requirement. I suppose if I had to, I'd create a one-off account for the purpose.
If it were Gmail, that would be really useful. But it's not. It's "Bobby Noname added you to a circle!" and "Joe I'veNeverHeardOf invited you to a hangout!" and "Spammy McSpammer liked a your video on YouTube!"
I don't need or want any of that nonsense. G+ isn't useful to me, but I don't have any way of turning off the notifications.
Oh, and as a bonus, the G+ API isn't working. Doubly annoying. http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2014/04/extracting-your-own-location...
I am fine using Skype with one particular ID because I am not using that ID on any other system. And that is how I prefer to use Internet everywhere, which I am sure many do as well.
I stopped using YouTube for commenting because of this reason exactly.