Google has officially started the process of shutting
down and deleting all consumer accounts on its Google+ social network
platform, bringing an end to the company’s attempt to directly compete
with the likes of Facebook and Twitter. “The shutdown is underway as of
this morning,” a Google spokesperson confirmed to The Verge by email on Tuesday.
Google+ is being phased out due to “low usage” and
because it turned into something of a security liability for Google; the
company has disclosed two significant data leaks that could have
exposed information for tens of millions of Google+ users to outside
developers. The first vulnerability, which was kept secret for months, prompted Google to decide it was time to close Google+ for good, and the second led to the company accelerating those shutdown plans by four months, meaning the service will meet its end in April instead of August.
In both cases, Google said there’s been no evidence that
developers were aware of these bugs or took advantage of them. Access to
Google+ APIs has already been cut off per Google’s timeline for the shutdown.
Google has acknowledged that Google+ failed to meet the
company’s expectations for user growth and mainstream pickup. “While our
engineering teams have put a lot of effort and dedication into building
Google+ over the years, it has not achieved broad consumer or developer
adoption, and has seen limited user interaction with apps,” Google’s
Ben Smith wrote in October. He then revealed a pretty damning stat for
where the service stands today: “90 percent of Google+ user sessions are
less than five seconds.”
But even if it never rose to anything that had a chance
of challenging Facebook, the platform has been home to a small-but-loyal
community of users through the years. I really like this piece by CNBC’s Jillian D’Onfro
as a reflection on what stood out about Google+: people took to it for
its topic-focused discussions, which helped conversations feel more
substantial and constructive than the squabbling that is so often found
on the public square that is Facebook or even Reddit. Google+ let you
organize people into circles, which the company hoped would feel more
true to the way we share things in day-to-day life.