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You're looking at it wrong, Google+ doesn't have "needs" that conflict with user friendliness, just the opposite, it's another source of information to use to make product even more user-friendly. The social network serves the products (including, yes, ads), rather than being an end in itself.
I don't know if he is wrong. I don't feel that Google+ has needs that conflict with user friendliness as much as has needs for uniformity across the Google system. Actually, Google+ might bring user friendliness where it isn't needed. I use Google Scholar often. But I don't see a benefit from Scholar being integrated into a social graph, or that Scholar should get more user friendly to integrate it. I want and need Scholar to be complex and as isolated as the research that it catalogs.