Escaping from the Google+ Minus

Sharing Picasa albums doesn't work well with Google+. When I would send a link to an album, the receiver would be redirected to a Google+ photo page. The album maps would be removed, and the user would have to click to see entire captions. Almost as bad was a big, obnoxious entreaty to join Google+ at the top of the page. This morning I deleted my Google+ profile, which I never saw a practical use for anyhow, and Picasa is returned to full functionality.

The instructions are here: http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=98083

Above I said that I had never seen a practical use for Google+. This is not strictly true. A few months ago I had circles and stuff, and would have been fine with it, but the Gmail page would always announce activity among those in my circles. It was distracting, and though some of what was going on was interesting, little of it related to anything that needed the sort of immediate attention Gmail seemed to suggest.