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Less than 6 months after its launch Google+1 just out of its Beta phase is faced with its greatest challenge. To meet expectations that the first few weeks of its midyear launch produced. According to ComScore Google+1 took off vertically and had clocked up 19.3 million visitors during its initial 3 week phase in the June 28th to July 19th period.

The service had innovative features like Circles, Hangouts, Sparks and Mobile and analysts had quickly predicted that Google had at last got it right. This despite the fact every previous attempt of Google to enter social networking in the past had failed.

Google Buzz that was designed to compete with micro blogging site Twitter was already faltering in July after encouraging response from users during its first month. The initial traffic burst had tapered off and Google had failed to provide innovative features in Buzz that would wean away even part of the 200 million users of Twitter. Today Google Buzz has failed and has been withdrawn by the search engine giant among many other Google projects that are not making waves.

Google+1 is not in good shape either, nearly five months after launch with just over 40 million users as per ComScore, far off from the initial projections. The number of active users is however not confirmed. In the last 5 months Facebook whose growth has been tapering off in the US grew faster than Google+1 with its active user rising globally from 750 million to 800 million users. Especially because Facebook has been adding features similar to Google+1 that no longer makes it special. The big question therefore making rounds is whether Google+1 will go the same way as Google Buzz.

Nikhil Arora Google+1 Chief spokesman last week said that the platform considers social to be only one aspect of its operation that would enhance its services and products offerings. Was he throwing in the towel in the battle of the tech titans? Perhaps not because Google must be very happy to compare the growth of Google Android apps for social in the mobile segment as against Facebook apps for mobile users.

The integration of Google photos, videos, texts, presentations, through Google+ seamlessly into the Android world is simply awesome. It is here that Google+1 anticipates handsome growth and finds its main competitors as Apple and Microsoft Nokia combine and not Facebook which will never be a great force in the high volume hand held device segment without its own mobile operating system.