But all its success came from strong-arming people into using it, using the leverage Google had with all its other products. So it makes zero sense to compare it to a startup.
That's not where all its success came from. That's the one downfall the article got right. It was successful before that. Trying to shoehorn a bunch of people who didn't want to use it into using it was the mistake. It was doing just fine before that and it would have continued to grow organically. It was never going to be a Facebook replacement though. It was better than that.
