I ran these intriguing assertions by a Google spokesperson, who insisted they are "absolutely NOT true". Google gave me the same statement it gave TechCrunch: "Today's announcement has no impact on our Google+ strategy – we have an incredibly talented team that will continue to build great user experiences across Google+, Hangouts and Photos."

So is Google+ really walking dead? Not any more than it was before Gundotra left, I suspect. The answer depends on whether you think it was ever truly alive.

When the service launched in 2011, there were hopes it might displace Facebook as the social network of choice. It ended up more like a social network of last resort, populated by an assortment of Google employees, Facebook dissenters, maths- and science-lovers, and hobbyists looking for a place to talk shop without all the cats and baby pictures. For what it's worth, my former colleague Farhad Manjoo also raves about its usefulness as a place to store your photos.

Regardless, as The New York Times pointed out recently, Google+ remains quite useful to Google as an identity service by which the company can better track users across services such as YouTube, Gmail, and Google Maps. My colleague David Auerbach rightly observes that this has lent Google some of the same qualities that so annoy people about Facebook, without all the same benefits. Still, that's unlikely to change just because Gundotra's gone, whatever other behind-the-scenes repercussions his departure might wreak.

If nothing else, Google seems likely to keep up the social networking aspects of the service as a way of deflecting claims that it's just about data-mining. That said, it probably doesn't need 1200 people working on the service, if it ever did.