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Google+'s vanity URL Terms and Conditions were updated yesterday and allow Google to remove users' custom addresses and also charge for vanity URLs.

Google+ has begun to introduce custom URLs to a "limited number of verified profiles and pages", but promises platform-wide availability to all of its 170 million or so users in the future.

Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt has defended the company's social strategy at its Big Tent event in London today. When questioned whether he believed that Google+ was a success or not, Schmidt replied "absolutely".

Google+ has just rolled-out a dedicated embeddable share button that Google hopes will encourage users to post more content to its developing social layer.

Coldplay is the most popular brand on Google+ after becoming the first Google+ page to be circled over one million times. The long-formed British rock band has rocketed to the number one spot, having increased their following by some 360,000 Google+ users this month alone.

Web users creating Google Accounts for the first time are automatically dispensed with associated Gmail and Google+ accounts, with no option to opt-out, further enforcing the emerging paradigm that Google is Google+.

Google are offering Google+ users a chance to hangout (live multi-user chat) with David Beckham, internationally renowned soccer player, later this month - if that's your sort of thing?

Google has today announced the biggest social update to Google Search in over two years, integrating public and privately shared Google+ posts and images into search results.

Google+ user adoption rate has accelerated to 625,000 new sign-ups each day, with the social network reaching 62 million users in total by December 27th, according to unofficial Google+ statistician Paul Allen and his team.

Google+ on Thursday night quietly introduced Twitter-like trending topics to its progressing social network. 'Trends' as they are officially known on Google+ appear on Google+ Search pages and function very similar to Twitter's Trending Topics.

As the dust settles on Google's launch of Google+ Pages for brands and businesses yesterday, we've dug a little deeper into the terms of service that each brand must adhere to on the network and found something very interesting.

How will the sign up process for a Google+ page work, and what sort of categories will be available? the Sociable takes a tour.

Google+ brand pages have finally arrived. Google made the announcement earlier today, enabling brands and businesses to legitimately connect with users on Google's 40 million strong social network.

Events of historical significance like the killing of Osama bin Laden in May, and most recently the murder of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, show the importance of real-time search and retrieval of news.

Google+ Senior Vice President Vic Gundotra and Google co-founder Sergey Brin revealed on stage yesterday at The Web 2.0 Summit in California that Google's new social network will begin to support Google Apps accounts in the "coming days".

Since Google's +1 button initially launched in March of this year, Google has been hard at work improving its overall usefulness and relevance to Google product users. Now, Wired are reporting Google's overarching intent for the +1 button; +1 clicks will influence rank in Google Search results.

WiseStamp, an email signature service that enhances once plain email signatures with personal social profiles and other content, has added Google Plus to its list of supported partners. WiseStamp exists as a Firefox, Chrome, Thunderbird, Flock and Safari extension and works with all major webmail services like Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail and AOL.

Although only a little over two weeks old at this stage, Google+ has already surpassed 10 million users who share one billion items every day, according to Google's CEO Larry Page.

Google has revealed that they are currently working on a version of Google+ for brands and businesses that will debut “later this year”. While many major brands are keen to join Google+, itself only one week into private beta, Google are actively discouraging businesses from using regular Google+ profiles, stating that an “optimal experience” for brands and organisations is on its way.

Google+ is currently in private beta, with users only able to access the social network after receiving an invite. Take our survey to find if you can access the site faster.