I agree that rallying their entire company around a key strategic initiative like this is not a blunder. It's an act of transparency that clearly communicates Google's direction both internally and externally.

There are many different perspectives at Google, and by focusing the entire organization on "social," he attempts to tap into the creativity of individuals throughout the entire organization. That type of engagement leads to unexpected benefits.

There are some good ideas in the article, like, "People want to isolate social from nonsocial aspects of their lives."

I suspect there is something to that, although there is also another factor the author may want to consider... the how much better are you than the current leader factor?

If a great new search engine launched tomorrow, that was a little better than Google, would it beat Google? No. Years ago at a Kelsey Group conference (2004ish) an executive at Google talked about the 50% rule. She said that for a search engine to beat Google, it had to be 50% better.

The point is that it is very difficult to persuade humans to change their behavior, and they will only do so when there is a huge benefit.