Ex-Google employee says Google+ ruined the company

From CNN:

Microsoft-turned-Google engineer James Whittaker -- now once again a Microsoft employee -- fired off a scathing blast Tuesday on a Microsoft blog about why he left Google.

"My last three months working for Google was a whirlwind of desperation," wrote Whittaker, who headed an engineering team for social network Google+. "The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus."

Whittaker, who joined Google in 2009 and left last month, described a corporate culture clearly divided into two eras: "Before Google+," and "After."
"After" is pretty terrible, in his view.

Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) once gave its engineers the time and resources to be creative. That experimental approach yielded several home-run hits like Chrome and Gmail. But Google fell behind in one key area: competing with Facebook


That turned into corporate priority No. 1 when Larry Page took over as the company's CEO. "Social" became Google's battle cry, and anything that didn't support Google+ was viewed as a distraction.