Google Plus Local? What's the point?

Well, Google has done it again, rolled out a major change without notice and very little info regarding the change. This morning they migrated all 80,000,000 Google Places listing into Google Plus creating a "Local" section to the barely breathing social media site.

I'm assuming this move is one they believe will revive G+ from almost certain cyber-death after it's months of hype but little actually activity on the site. My biggest question today is will current Google Plus business pages be automatically merged with their corresponding "Local" page or will it have to be done manually and if so how?

I think one of the downfalls to Google Plus and other changes Google has made recently (new dashboard here on Blogger and personalized searches) is that there is really no instruction to how to use them or why the change will really make things better. They like to pretend like they give us that information, usually in a video blog that is just a vague commercial for the change and has little to do with the actual changes.

I'm sure the Google big boys are watching the Facebook stock decline and thinking this is where G+ will make it's great emergence, but I'm doubting that they will ever really get that foothold no matter how much of their kingdom they integrate into Google Plus.