Google has said that 170 million people have registered to use its Facebook rival, Google+, as it unveiled a redesign that apes features of its larger rival.
The search giant is heavily promoting Google+ both online and in television advertising, but independent data has so far suggested users do not use the service much after they register.
In an apparent retort, the man in charge of the project, Vic Gundotra, said that “more than 170 million people have upgraded to Google+”.
The figure represents an increase of 80 million since January, but critics point out that anyone who signs up for any Google service now creates a Google+ account too. Even with the new policy, Google remains a long way behind its competition; Facebook has more than 850 million users.
“We still patiently wait for actual engagement statistics, though we’re not holding our breath,” said the Search Engine Watch blog.
Data from third party companies that track web traffic suggest there is good reason for Google’s reticence to release “engagement” statistics. In February, comScore said Google+ visitors spent just three minutes on the service in January on average, compared to between six and seven hours on Facebook.
“It's still early days, and there’s plenty left to do, but we're more excited than ever to build a seamless social experience, all across Google,” said Mr Gundotra as he announced the latest tweaks to Google+.
They include the introduction of Twitter-style trending topics and large profile pictures at the top of pages that appear similar to Facebook’s recent redesign.
“It accelerates our efforts to create a simpler, more beautiful Google,” said Mr Gundotra.
More original features have been developed to assist navigation of Google+, including a customisable “ribbon” down the left-hand side.
“Taken together, these powers make it easier to access your favorites, and to adjust your preferences over time,” said Mr Gundotra.
“We've also built the ribbon with the future in mind, giving us an obvious (and clutter-free) space for The Next Big Feature, and The Feature After That.”
In general the redesign offers more space for pictures and video, allowing users to post what Google calls “full bleed” – or actual size - content from elsewhere.
While the new features were generally well-received, observers still argued that Google has yet to make a significant impact on Facebook’s dominant position in social networking.
Google+ and Chrome app developers were unhappy with the redesign, however, saying they received no wraning it would cause their software to malfunction.
"Why didn't you reach out to the developers and tell them major change is coming?," said Mohamed Mansour, a devloper based in Canada.
"Didn't we support this platform enough to know things will break? Now hundreds of thousands of machines who are visiting Google+ have a broken experience, many errors will be shown, many popups will be alerted, our thousands of hours of hard work down the drain."
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