Since its launch last June, Google+ has reached more than 90 million users in just over a period of six months. It would be astonishing if people created the accounts the same way they did for Facebook and Twitter. However, the case with Google+ is different. According to news sources, most users accidentally create Google+ accounts while signing up for other Google services. However, the CEO of Google, Larry Page, finds Google+ a success. In a press release, he stated:

“I am super excited about the growth of Android, Gmail, and Google+, which now has 90 million users globally – well over double what I announced just three months ago. By building a meaningful relationship with our users through Google+, we will create amazing experiences across our services. I’m very excited about what we can do in 2012 – there are tremendous opportunities to help users and grow our business.”

The overall increase in Google+ memberships may be due to its integration into social networks via Google Apps, Gmail, Picasa, and all Google services. Today, even though Google+ is a prominent part of search results, it is still behind when compared to Facebook and Twitter, which have 800 and 100 million active users respectively.

“Over 60 percent of Google+ users use Google products on a daily basis. Over 80 percent of Google+ users use Google products every week,” said Page in Thursday’s Google earnings call.

Measuring the popularity of a service according to its registered users, rather than its daily active ones, tells you nothing about its overall success. Given the popularity of Google search, Gmail, and YouTube, 60 percent is quite a low percentage of daily interactive users. Truth be told, the statistics provided are only there to hide the actual number of people who really do use Google+.

Alexis Madrigal of the Atlantic said the following as a response to the statistics mentioned above:

“Unless we’re misinterpreting what ‘Google product’ is, these numbers are very strange. Remember that Google’s products include Google Search, Gmail, and YouTube, so one has to wonder about the 40 percent of Google+ users who don’t use a single Google product in a day. One might even conclude that the 20 percent of Google+ users who don’t use a Google product in a week are not really “on” the internet in a way that most users would recognize.”

According to VentureBeat, this is not the first time Google has released misleading Google+ statistics. Last July, Page said, “The service had 10 million users who shared 1 billion items a day.” That seems quite unrealistic; does it make sense for an average user to share “100 items a day”? Many may see Google+ as a start-up that has gained popularity through Google’s position in the market and not through its effectiveness as a social networking site.

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