The world is becoming more and more hectic so it's understandable, though not necessarily excusable, that you sometime don't have time for your friends. But technology is making it easy to at least make it look like you care.
It's becoming increasingly harder to miss someone's birthday since "everyone" seems to want to remind you.
Facebook is a good source for birthday reminders, but it's hardly the only one. Now, Google is getting in on the game and stepping it up while it's at it, people will start
seeing birthday notifications on the Google homepage itself, as long as they're using Google+ of course.
If you don't want your birthday broadcasted to the world, maybe you're one of those weird people who doesn't like birthday wishes from people they haven't spoken to in years, rest assured that the notifications will be shown only to the people you share your birthday with on Google+.