It has become a little more difficult to sign up for Google (News - Alert)+ even as the site continues to skyrocket in membership.

Users now need to set up a Gmail account to become affiliated with Google+. Previously, users just needed to list an e-mail address and enter some simple demographic information.

The latest move by Google was criticized by some industry watchers. “This forced-signup device smells of an attempt to boost G+ numbers, and is reminiscent not of the Google of yore, but of the Apple (News - Alert) and Facebook of today,” according to a report from TechCrunch. “G+ is the new glue holding Google’s services together, but it’s a little early to be forcing it down people’s throats, don’t you think?

“The problem is how Google keeps trying to force it down people’s throats, whether through automatically signing people up or trying to push engagement with disasters like Search, plus Your World,” agrees another report from Techland.Time.com. “If you want to wrest away market share from Facebook (News - Alert), try making your product more engaging than Facebook, not finding ways to artificially pump up your numbers.”

It was recently announced that Google+ has 90 million registered users, according to a report appearing on TMCnet. These are defined as people or organizations which place profiles on Google+, TMCnet adds. This compares quite favorably to the growth of the well-known Facebook site, which took four years to get to 90 million users.

It was just in October when Google reported that Google+ had 40 million users. And Google+ was just started during June 2011. Since that time, over 1 million Google+ pages were published and over 3.4 billion photographs were shared via the social media site, according to Truthdive.com.

However, Nikesh Arora, Google’s chief business officer, claims Google+ is not a social network, nor does Arora see Facebook as a rival, Truthdive.com reported.

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