Retrieving Google Plus share count with wp_remote_post

I see that the question is 2 years old, but I worked hard two days to find solution of the very same problem and here is my code (for me works 100%).

$json_string = wp_remote_request('https://clients6.google.com/rpc',
array(
    'method'    => 'POST',
    'body'      => '[{"method":"pos.plusones.get","id":"p","params":{"nolog":true,"id":"'.rawurldecode(get_permalink()).'","source":"widget","userId":"@viewer","groupId":"@self"},"jsonrpc":"2.0","key":"p","apiVersion":"v1"}]',
    'headers' => array('Content-Type' => 'application/json')
));

$json = json_decode($json_string['body'], true);



if(isset($json[0]['result']['metadata']['globalCounts']['count'])){
   echo intval($json[0]['result']['metadata']['globalCounts']['count']);
}else{
   echo'0';
}

The big difference from the code above is that I send request in JSON format, not as an array.