Charles Arthur of the England’s The Guardian called Google+ “Laboured stuff.” Perhaps he wasn’t cool enough for Google+. Fact: He was not cool enough for Google+. His concluding reason for his dislike of Google+ is that “everything else it does becomes too complicated.” I’d bet money that Charles has never spent much time with the world’s go-to social network, Facebook.

The beauty of Google+, which Charles actually seems to deny, is in its simplicity. Unlike Facebook, Google+ is clean and straightforward, without extraneous applications. It is a perfect combination of Facebook and Twitter with added internet-integration.

One of Facebook’s biggest problems is that it is so contained. Facebook is its own site: it really fails to connect with others. Sure, you can ‘like’ an NY Times Article (or perhaps a Huffington Post Article, if you’re cool), but Facebook falls flat in its internet-integration. Google+ on the other hand, is integrated into one brilliant multifaceted Google experience. A Google+ account lines up on the Google toolbar next to one’s mail and documents. Link in Twitter, and the sites people tweet about appear in the Google Search function.

You might be questioning the nature of this fragmented equation (Google + what?). Well, Google+ has the addition of ‘circles’: a brilliant method to organize your friends and their posts (as well as your posts) into separate, but sometimes overlapping, easy to shuffle streams. Create a circle of close friends, and a circle of acquaintances, thus eliminating the horrors of Facebook’s overwhelming and constantly-changing newsfeed.

Afraid of trying something new? Afraid of leaving the muddled, confusing, but ever-so-dear Facebook? Then Google+ is too cool for you.