From Jason Hiner at the TechRepublic - This is the way Google always wanted social networking to work, and this time the company may have pulled it off.  Google’s previous social attempts have been unmitigated train wrecks, if we’re being completely honest. Open Social failed because Google couldn’t get Facebook and other social networks to buy into the idea of a shared social identity. Google Wave missed the target by not being useful enough to attract any users. Google Buzz freaked people out by naively overstepping its bounds on privacy.

So when Google unveiled its latest social experiment last week — called Google+ — I was extremely skeptical. Still, Facebook is so malignant in terms of privacy and such a mess to use and configure, that I was more than happy to give Google+ a try. I just expected it that it would be a speed-dating relationship like most of my product reviews and destined to last no more than a few weeks at the most.