Google+ Shuts Down Forever

 

It’s been a long time coming but the day is finally here. Last year, Google announced that they will be shutting down their social network and although the site has been closing for a while with Google having disabled the creation of new accounts in February, today is officially the day Google+ is no more!

Google stated –

“On April 2nd, your Google+ account and any Google+ pages you created will be shut down and we will begin deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts.”

According to the search giant, it will take them a couple of months to delete all Google+ content which means some users may still be able to access their content during this time.

But why is Google+ shutting down?

Google decided to shut down the social platform after the discovery of a bug that exposed personal data of almost 500,000 Google+ users, with the original closing date being August 2019 but shortly after that discovery, they discovered another bug that exposed over 52.2 million user’s personal data!

While the company said there was no evidence of that data being used maliciously, they decided it would be a good time to close the social network down for good.

However, this isn’t the sole reason for Google+ closing. The social platform hasn’t been living up to Google’s expectations for a long time before those bugs were uncovered, having failed to make a name for itself amongst the big hitter such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, despite its rapid growth in its first year.

When Google+ launched back in 2011, Google had high hopes for the social network and invested heavily into it. It managed to surpass 400 million users in its first year, with a growth of 33% per annum (helped mostly by Google’s huge reach) but these users just weren’t using the social platform enough and Google+ never really posed much of a threat to the likes of Facebook.

As a social network, Google+ did fail but some of its features such as Photos and Hangouts have been turned into separate services and will live on.