Since the G+ icon has been added to the small column of share icons, I find myself unable to read a question without looking at it at least once or twice. The color is so unlike everything else on the UX site that my brain interprets it as a notification or something that I must deal with immediately. It's RED, after all, and we all know what a powerful color it is... Examples one, two, three, four, and five.
I did a quick graphical survey of the share icons on several graduated sites. UX and English are the only two that have this relatively large, flat, red, glaring icon:
UX, English, Android, Stackoverflow, Superuser, Serverfault, Webapps, Math, Photography, Bicycles, Cooking, Apple.
Photography and Apple have my favorite icons of the bunch: mellow, yet sleek, attractive, and slightly stylized.
The rest are all shaded or softened to a degree that makes the icons blend in a bit better. UX is the only site that doesn't soften any of the icon colors.
Is sharing from UX, and sharing on G+ specifically, so important that we use such an intense graphic to represent the site?