Last Thursday, Google CEO Larry Page reported that the company's oft-questioned social network, Google Plus, had reached a milestone of 90 million users. And then the story got complicated.

"Plus users are very engaged with our products. Over 60 percent of them engaged daily and 80 percent engaged weekly," Page said.

Really? Did Google just release the motherload of all statistics, the one that pundits have been clamoring for since the official launch of Google Plus in late September of last year? Were Google Plus users now more engaged than Facebook's 800+ million user base, of which more than 50 percent log into Facebook on a typical day?

Nope.

Additional investigation reveals that Page was actually referring to Google Plus users who engage with any Google service – Gmail, Maps, Docs, search, et cetera – while they're logged into their Google accounts. And, as expected, Google's figure of "90 million users" only refers to the total number of accounts that have been created on Google Plus regardless of whether a user logs in three times a day or just once over his or her lifetime.

To some pundits, both Page and Google are being purposefully evasive.

"[What] concerns me most is that Google is touting these meaningless statistics in the hopes that journalists will misunderstand them and report that Google+ is seeing rapid growth. The bottom line is, those 60 percents, 80 percents and 90 million registered users are just there to mask the fact that Google doesn't want to tell us how many people are actually using Google+," writes reDesign mobile analyst Rocky Agrawal.

"It's intellectually dishonest. And as a public company, it raises questions of Google's intent — the market is watching Google's moves in social and needs to see traction. I expect better from Google," he added.

However, others point to the figures as signs that Google has successfully integrated Plus into its overall portfolio of services. And, in doing so, the company has better blurred the lines between what was once a strictly "Google Plus" environment versus a "Google" environment. Continued use of Google services by Google Plus members better ties them and their up-to-date data back to the social network, which should (ideally) encourage increased Google Plus adoption over time.

"[It] seems like Google is committed to integrating [Google Plus] into their core business, going so far as to sully their prized page rank with social results," writes VentureBeat's Ben Popper. "And so its fair to consider how often Google+ users rely on other Google services like email, photos, calendar and chat, which represent a data rich portrait of their social lives."

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