You may not visit Google+ every day and check status updates obsessively as you do with Facebook (FB) or Twitter, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t using Google’s (GOOG) social network. Forbes‘ David Thier writes that the brilliant thing about Google+ from a revenue-generating perspective is that “as long as you’re signed into Google services or properties, you’re passively using Google+, and the site collects data either way.” This means searches you conduct on Google Maps, YouTube or the Google Play store are all little data points that are collected by Google+ and are used to improve micro-targeting for advertisements. You may not think this is necessarily a good thing, of course, but it is certainly a clever move on Google’s part.

Prior to joining BGR as News Editor, Brad Reed spent five years covering the wireless industry for Network World. His first smartphone was a BlackBerry but he has since become a loyal Android user.