Posted May 06, 2015
skeletonbow: This is just personal hypothesis, but since their intent is for Galaxy client and services to be optional, I am under the assumption that once they work all of the kinks out of the current software and backend services, website, etc. that people who choose to not use any of it probably will not see such things as friend requests or other Galaxy related stuff.
I believe the friend system is planned for the website too, not just Galaxy; it's just deployed simultaneously first in Galaxy. I may be wrong.