Google+ Shutting Down on April 2

Google will be shutting down the consumer version of its Google+ platform by April 2, 2019. The search giant announced last year that Google+ will be shut down after it discovered a new bug, which compromised the data of nearly 52.5 million users, though it did not give out an exact date when the service will be discontinued.

Google is an American multinational technology company that specializes in Internet-related services and products, which include online advertising technologies, search engine, cloud computing, software, and hardware. It is considered one of the Big Four technology companies, along with Amazon, Apple, and Facebook.

The end is finally in sight for Google's ill-fated social media venture Google+.

The company announced this week that Google+ will officially shut down April 2, after Google initially announced it would end the service back in fall.

Google acknowledged the main reason it's shutting the social arm down, noting its low usage in a blog post announcing the end date. That, coupled with the struggle to live up to expectations and security concerns, has made Google+ simply not worth keeping around.

Google did not directly address the security concerns in its post, but a security flaw left nearly 500,000 users data exposed to third-party app developers. After that was fixed, another issue was found, which led to an earlier shutdown date in April. Now, Google has revealed its full timeline to wind down the service.

Google+ account, as well as Google+ pages that users created, will be shut down on April 2. Google will start deleting content including photos and videos from users' Album Archive as well as Google+ pages. People will not be able to create new Google+ profiles, pages, communities, or events from February 4.

Google+ users are advised to download and save their data before April 2. Google has said that the photos and videos in Google Photos will not be deleted. The data for Google+ Community owners and moderators will be available for download starting early March 2019.

"The process of deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts, Google+ Pages, and Album Archive will take a few months, and content may remain through this time. For example, users may still see parts of their Google+ account via activity log and some consumer Google+ content may remain visible to G Suite users until consumer Google+ is deleted," Google+ said in its support page.

When Google had first announced the data compromise, it also said maintaining the Google+ product was hard and that 90 percent of user sessions were less than five seconds on the site.

Google reported in October last year that a software bug in its API for Google+ impacted close to half a million accounts. Following the announcement, Google notified consumer users and enterprise customers impacted by this bug.