The numbers surrounding Google Plus and Google Plus users are somewhat muddled. Many sources say that Google Plus has millions of users, others state that these users signed up and never left, and still others believe that the numbers are simply false. Regardless, Google isn’t giving up on Plus and, in fact, the company plans to work on growing Google Plus over the next year or so according to a recent Bloomberg interview.

How does Google plan to grow Plus? The plans that Google has aren’t exactly translucent, but the interview mentioned above did give a bit of a glimpse into Google’s future plans. In addition, the Google representative being interviewed took a few moments to point out the faults of Google Plus competitors.

Google Slams Facebook In Bloomberg Interview

First, let’s talk about the good stuff that happened during the recent Bloomberg/Google interview (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-10/google-aiming-to-more-than-double-its-user-base-this-year-gundotra-says.html|read interview here). This post originally started off as simply covering Google’s plans to expand Google Plus over the next year. After watching the Bloomberg interview that was recently recorded at SXSW however, the post morphed into coverage about a full-blown Facebook attack. During an interview with Google Senior Vice President, Vic Gondotra, it became abundantly clear that Google intends to “do things differently” than other companies (ahem – Facebook).

When the Bloomberg reporter brought up Facebook’s current IPO and asked whether or not all the IPO chaos has driven some new users to Google Plus, Gondotra responded with “…there are some differences in our approach versus some of our competitors. For example, we don’t believe we need to jam display advertising into your children’s photos or the photo of your dinner party last night.” He then went on to state how Google plans to use advertising in a way that’s “relevant.” So what I’m gathering from this portion of the interview is that Google will be using advertising in the near future in order to grow the Plus network, but the form of advertising Google is after won’t be the kind that Facebook is scrambling to put together for the sake of nervous investors.

All About the Users

Gondotra did make it clear during the interview that Google is all about the people, and that the Plus network can’t really (or shouldn’t really) be separated from Google as a whole. Gondotra also told Bloomberg that Google almost called Google Plus “Google 2.0” in order to make the connection between Google and Google Plus apparent. So you can just think of Google Plus as an extension of the Google services that you already use – or, at least that’s what Google wants you to think.

Interestingly, when asked about Google Plus’ current user numbers, Gondotra make it clear that you can’t separate Google as a whole from Plus, so Google users are Plus users, or something like that (in short, those numbers are a tad skewed, aren’t they?). In any case, Google Plus users, get ready to see Plus grow by leaps and bounds throughout the next year or so (if you’re still using the networking, that is).