That's a very Google-centric way of looking at it. From their point of view, merging everything may be a big convenience and make them more money through more detailed profiling of users.
It's a very every company ever way of looking at it -- if you have multiple systems that do largely the same thing, you take the better or more encompassing of the two (or three, etc) and let it win. This is 90% of the purpose of companies acquiring systems and companies.
As to tracking, do you think Google didn't already track you with complete accuracy and knowledge? I don't think this does anything at all to improve their profiling of you. Literally nothing. They probably have some hopes about engagement, but I would wager the primary motivation is simply rationalizing systems.
And let's be clear -- YouTube's comments before this debacle were a garbage dump of noise. They represented the most notorious, least signal manifestation of comments on the tubes. Now, apparently, distaste for Google+ is enough for people to black that out of their memory?
It's a very every company ever way of looking at it -- if you have multiple systems that do largely the same thing, you take the better or more encompassing of the two (or three, etc) and let it win. This is 90% of the purpose of companies acquiring systems and companies.
As to tracking, do you think Google didn't already track you with complete accuracy and knowledge? I don't think this does anything at all to improve their profiling of you. Literally nothing. They probably have some hopes about engagement, but I would wager the primary motivation is simply rationalizing systems.
And let's be clear -- YouTube's comments before this debacle were a garbage dump of noise. They represented the most notorious, least signal manifestation of comments on the tubes. Now, apparently, distaste for Google+ is enough for people to black that out of their memory?