One thing about this new branding is that I have never ever seen Go spelled with all caps (GO). Most only see it as either "Go" or "go". Spelling it with all caps ("GO") makes it look like a single shapeless typographic slab. "Go" is found in text, and "go" is found in code, cmd and everything related.
In the original the letters were thinner, and that could have made it feel more lightweight, so it wasn't that bad.
Right, these are js links, but they point from Google+ to Google+ — they are thus not exactly an example of js links desired to prevent user from leaving the website or at least get more information to.
Nothing kills the web, at least at a reliable time scope. Just the comfort of browsing and quality content decreases in the "main stream" (not to be confused with stream_(social networking)). In the past, there were nice, plain text peer-to-peer newsgroups, plain text chat (IRC, maybe XMPP), (almost) plain text websites, plain text emails. Nowadays, newsgroups are no longer popular enough to be considered a window to the world. People send bloated HTML emails and chat using proprietary services, requiring heavy GUI. Websites prompt for Java, JavaScript and Flash just to show you less than 2KB of text, and run tons of scripts to make you share a link to their content to the social networks, or even just to upvote their content on such. Almost nobody uses trackbacks.
What people mean by "killing the web" can be compared to what people meant when talking about Eternal September, but now it got worse, and way more people are in it.