Larry Page Tries His Best To Convince Us That Google+ Isn't Dead

After Google exec Vic Gundotra stepped down from his position running Google+ in April, rumors spread that Google would essentially stop thinking of it as a social network, and consider it more of a platform instead.

In a recent interview with Farhad Manjoo of The New York Times, however, Google CEO Larry Page stressed the importance of social and did his best to talk up Google+.

The social network was barely mentioned in Google's keynote address Wednesday at this week's I/O developer conference, and Manjoo asked Page what was going on with it.

"The service has been growing tremendously," Page insists. "People are always like, 'Oh, what's going on?' But for us, we're super excited about it because it's a big service, growing continuously, since we launched it, at a high rate, and we're making it better and better every day."

Page says social is even more important for Google than it was two years ago, and that the Google+ community is very excited and dedicated. He says when people think about Google+, they just think of its home stream, but that it's much more than that. Page mentions Google Play reviews as being a big part of the social network. YouTube comments are another one (though not everyone is happy about that).

He also makes a pitch about why people should use Google+.

"People forget we're able to make our services better by understanding your relationships, making sharing work and understanding identity," he told Manjoo. "These are deep and important things for us as a company."