However, Gundotra said that Google is deliberately being careful and conservative in designing and rolling out APIs (application programming interfaces) and tools for developers to create applications for Google+. The developer strategy is still being worked out and Google doesn't want to prematurely release tools and then have to significantly modify them or remove them altogether, he said.

Brin, meanwhile, said jokingly that he didn't get "beyond the first 1,000 pages" of Yegge's memo, referring to the document's length, and advised people to be more concise in their writing. "Sometimes I use [Yegge's memo] as a nighttime aide," Brin said.

As CEO and co-founder Larry Page said recently at the company's third-quarter earnings release, Brin and Gundotra said they were very satisfied with the fact that Google+ now has more than 40 million members and that almost 3.5 billion photos have been uploaded to the site.

In a meeting with reporters after appearing on stage, Gundotra said that Google is far from declaring Google+ a sure success, saying that the site is at a very early stage of development and that the company envisions multiple years of work before it will consider whether the site has met its lofty expectations.

For example, the plan is to let Google+ users apply the Circles they have created for sharing different content with different groups to other Google sites, he said.