Well known Google progammer and blogger Steve Yegge has posted a long rant about Google’s failures concerning its social network Google+, which he has described as a “pathetic afterthought”. Yegge posted the piece on Google+ and had intended it to be an “internal post, visible to only Google staff, but mistakenly posted it so that it was visible for everyone to see. Then he left it up.

Yegge who previously worked at Amazon before joining Google spends a lot of time comparing the two companies before devling into the real problem as he sees it with Google+.  In a long damning post he hints that it might already be already be too late for Google+, which he says is “a knee-jerk reaction”.

Here are the highlights of what Yegge had to say:

The Google+ platform is a pathetic afterthought: Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo). We all don’t get it. The Golden Rule of platforms is that you Eat Your Own Dogfood. The Google+ platform is a pathetic afterthought. We had no API at all at launch, and last I checked, we had one measly API call.

Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that’s not why they are successful.

Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone. Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars. Some spend all their time on Farmville. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so there’s something there for everyone.

We are trying to predict what people want: Our Google+ team took a look at the aftermarket and said: “Gosh, it looks like we need some games. Let’s go contract someone to, um, write some games for us.” Do you begin to see how incredibly wrong that thinking is now? The problem is that we are trying to predict what people want and deliver it for them.

Facebook gets it. That’s what really worries me. That’s what got me off my lazy butt to write this thing. I hate blogging. I hate… plussing, or whatever it’s called when you do a massive rant in Google+ even though it’s a terrible venue for it but you do it anyway because in the end you really do want Google to be successful. And I do! I mean, Facebook wants me there, and it’d be pretty easy to just go. But Google is home, so I’m insisting that we have this little family intervention, uncomfortable as it might be.

Wave was a great platform: Ironically enough, Wave was a great platform, may they rest in peace. But making something a platform is not going to make you an instant success. A platform needs a killer app. Facebook — that is, the stock service they offer with walls and friends and such — is the killer app for the Facebook Platform. And it is a very serious mistake to conclude that the Facebook App could have been anywhere near as successful without the Facebook Platform.

Is it too late for Google+? I’m not saying it’s too late for us, but the longer we wait, the closer we get to being Too Late.

You can read the full text of Yegge’s post here.