I think his complaint is that he doesn't want to opt into the Google+ service. You can have a Google account but not opt into Google+ (not agree to the ToS, etc.), and it used to be that there were things that you could do with your Google account that you can't do any more unless you also sign on the dotted line for Google+ and then go through the steps to customize Google+ (and turning off and opting out of the things that you don't like about G+).
Practically, it's not an overly huge burden to accept G+ and then run through all the settings to effectively disable it, which is what I did. But I suppose for some, it's about the principle of the matter.
Some third-party clients (Pidgin) can show you every instance of a contact's signon and what the status of each of those are. So I can, for example, see that person A is currently logged into desktop Talk and their phone and that they're idle on the desktop but active on the phone. With more and more people always signed on because of mobile devices, I'm finding this to be indispensable.