Bradley Horowitz from Google confirmed the following today – “Just wanted to confirm that the rumors are true — I’m excited to be running Google’s Photos and Streams products! It’s important to me that these changes are properly understood to be positive improvements to both our products and how they reach users”

Via Forbes, “But Pichai said that two important parts of Google+, Photos and Hangouts, may soon be separated from the main product. “I think increasingly you’ll see us focus on communications, photos and the Google+ Stream as three important areas, rather than being thought of as one area,” he said.”

This may really impact some online communities on Google+, but I suppose we will just have to see how everything pans out.