Remember signing up for Google+ and then not knowing what the fudgesticks to do with it?

The truth is Google wasn't really concerned if you chose Facebook over its social media 'attempt'. Because what the $400 billion data vacuum really wanted was to track everything you do online and sell that personal information to advertisers.

It's not such a huge surprise there, since critics called it as far back as 2011 when Google+ started forcing profiles to use their real names, and then Google+ suddenly became your sign-in for other Google services. The company finally confessed their con to the Times, with a corporate spin of course:

"Google Plus gives you the opportunity to be yourself, and gives Google that common understanding of who you are," said Bradley Horowitz, vice president of product management for Google Plus.

The type of data collected by Google+ since it launched has become even more valuable, and Google is getting better at data collection than Facebook. According to the Times:

The reason is that once you sign up for Plus, it becomes your account for all Google products, from Gmail to YouTube to maps, so Google sees who you are and what you do across its services, even if you never once return to the social network itself [...]

Thanks to Plus, Google knows about people's friendships on Gmail, the places they go on maps and how they spend their time on the more than two million websites in Google's ad network. And it is gathering this information even though relatively few people use Plus as their social network.

Now that search advertising, Google's primary source of profits, has slowed, the company has gotten more aggressive about tracking what you do online.

Plus is now so important to Google that the company requires people to sign up to use some Google services, like commenting on YouTube. The push is being done so forcefully that it has alienated some users and raised privacy and antitrust concerns, including at the Federal Trade Commission. Larry Page, Google's chief executive, tied employee bonuses companywide to its success and appointed Vic Gundotra, a senior Google executive, to lead it. [...]

The way Google is tying its search engine, which dominates the market, with a less popular product in Plus has set off antitrust concerns. The Federal Trade Commission raised the issue during its recent antitrust investigation of Google, according to two people briefed on the matter. That investigation closed without a finding of wrongdoing.

But consumers aren't the only ones being suckered into Google+. The Times says brands are being lured into the G+ account hype because Google promises them "prime placement on the right-hand side of search results, with photos and promotional posts," the kind of advertising you'd normally have to pay for.Brands are also compelled to join Google+ in order to show up higher in Google's search results.

The Economist has more fans on Google Plus than on Facebook — six million versus three million — and its journalists use Plus features like Hangouts. Yet Chandra Magee, The Economist's senior director of audience development, emphasized the value of Plus as a search engine optimization tool.

"There is potential there to help us get in front of new audiences," she said. "But it also helps with our S.E.O. strategy because our posts on Google Plus actually show up in our search engine results."

[NYTimes]