Humor: Google yesterday rolled out a new layout for Google+, it's social network. The new UI has impressed a majority of users. If Facebook's infamous TimeLine was inspired by the horror movies "I Know What You Did Last Summer" to help stalkers and governments,", Google has gone geek. The new design of Google+ is inspired by Gnome 3 Shell.

"A critical piece of this social layer is a design that grows alongside our aspirations. So today we’re introducing a more functional and flexible version of Google+. We think you’ll find it easier to use and nicer to look at, but most importantly, it accelerates our efforts to create a simpler, more beautiful Google." wrote Vic Gundotra on a Google blog.

When asked about the resemblance of Google+ with Gnome 3 Shell, Vic told this reporter, "Our engineers use Linux for development and since they work closely with our designers they seem to be influenced by the design of the system they are using. I can't confirm if it was inspired by Gnome 3 Shell as I use Mac".

However, not everyone was happy with this disclosure. Ubuntu fans are claiming that Google+ looks like Ubuntu Unity. Some top Canonical executives have posted images of Unity alongside Google+ to show the resemblance.

"We are proud that Free Software was there before Google. Our Unity interface was created with social network in mind. Once again we have proved that we are ahead of the competition. U1 came before iCloud, Ubuntu Music came before Google Music. We are leading the PC world with our innovations like HUD and Dash. Google's imitation of Unity is another example of our leadership," wrote Mark Shuttleworth from his Mars-based headquarter.

Joey-Elijah Sneddon of the popular Ubuntu blog OMG! Ubuntu said, "That was a real OMG moment when I opened Google Plus and saw the new UI. For a second I thought someone has changed by Unity there. I hit the Super key several times to invoke Dash within Google+."

The critics of Unity don't buy this claim of Ubuntu. "They have not contributed anything to Google+ and are now trying use this opportunity. Google+ is close to Gnome 3 Shell than it is to Unity. Yes, Unity will look like Google+ if you open a chat window and place it at the right side of the screen and do a little bit more customization. Sadly, the only thing you can't do with Unity is customization."

"Haters will drag Unity where it doesn't even make sense. Google+ is an example. I believe that Google+ looks more like Unity than Gnome 3 Shell. You can hack the code of Unity and you can make it look exactly like Google+. By Ubuntu 14.10 when we will have all the customization matured enough you will find that Google+ was indeed inspired by Unity."

"It's no secret that Google is a heavy Ubuntu user and from the look of the new Google+ it is obvious that they are running Unity at Google", says Alan Pope.

"It's very easy to prove that Google+ was inspired by Ubuntu," says Ratan Noora, an Ubuntu developer. "Just run this command "sudo apt-get install gnome gnome-shell" and select Gnome from the login screen."

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