Why Google+ rather than Facebook

People have asked me why I left Facebook for Google plus, so I thought I'd make a few notes about my reasoning.

• With social networking sites such as Facebook and Google plus, it's important to remember that as users are not the customers, but rather the product. The customers are generally the advertisers, and we are the product that the social networking sites are selling.
• The informal philosophy of Google is 'do no evil'. Over the years I've been a user of many of Google's services, as well as interacting with them on a professional level. I've consistently seen Google strive to keep their informal philosophy, and they are a company that I trust. This does not mean Google will do the wrong thing, but at least I know they have good intentions.
• My experience with Facebook over the years suggests a polar opposite philosophy from Google. Some of my negative experiences probably stem from simple incompetence, but I believe that Facebook tends to be rather more exploitative than most companies.
• Working as a software professional in the financial services industry, with some focus on security, I'm acutely aware of the importance of privacy. Most users don't care about privacy until it is breached. Identity theft is the obvious example, but finding the photos of your children are now unexpectedly accessible to anyone can be equally disturbing (this happened to a friend of mine with Facebook). Google has worked hard to not only implement effective privacy, but they've done some great research around privacy needs and privacy usability. Facebook on the other hand seems to strive to make my information less private than I intend.
• I find the general usability of Google plus to be far superior to Facebook. Google plus has Google's classic simple, effective user interface whereas Facebook tends towards cluster and confusion. Facebook also reworks it's interface periodically for no obvious reason. The notification system that Google+ provides is a good example of it's superior usability; it's just what I wanted from Facebook from the first time I used it.
• Google plus uses the Twitter approach of 'following', rather than 'friend'. In the real world, human relationships are generally asymmetric. Many people are interested in celebrities, but the interest is not reciprocated. Over time I believe the following model will be more effective and pervasive than the friend model. I've seen this in exercise-based social networking sites; Dailymile uses the friend model, where Fitocracy uses the following model. I see the Fitocracy approach working more effectively.
• Facebook owns rights to any images you upload to their site.