Yesterday Google announced changes to its Google + social network, explaining “When we launched Google+, we set out to help people discover, share and connect across Google like they do in real life. While we got certain things right, we made a few choices that, in hindsight, we’ve needed to rethink. So over the next few months, we’re going to be making some important changes.”

Google have also announced that you’ll no longer have to create a Google + profile in order to link to other Google services such as YouTube. “So in the coming months, a Google Account will be all you’ll need to share content, communicate with contacts, create a YouTube channel and more, all across Google. YouTube will be one of the first products to make this change, and you can learn more on their blog. As always, your underlying Google Account won’t be searchable or followable, unlike public Google+ profiles. And for people who already created Google+ profiles but don’t plan to use Google+ itself, we’ll offer better options for managing and removing those public profiles.”

These changes should make it easier and quicker for brands to set up on just the service they want rather than having to connect several public Google profiles to one page. Many have commented that this could signify the decline of Google + as a social platform.

We’d be interested to hear you thoughts…. Do you use Google +? What do you think of these account changes?