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Google's failed attempt at a social media platform, Google+, will soon be coming to an end. In the aftermath of what appears to have been a major security flaw within Google+, the company ended up not disclosing the breach of information to its users. Google itself says the issue was quietly resolved in March 2018, but not before third parties obtained private user data off of Google+ profiles. Google claims that they didn't tell its users because they believed that without sufficient information on who was hacked, they found it wouldn't be useful to identify the public on the matter. Due to this, a memo from Google stated that revealing such a leak wouldn't be beneficial, and would raise concerns, akin to Facebook's own controversial leak.

Around 500,000 users were affected by this, potentially. The bug allowed for developers that had access to Google+'s API to access information of users that gave permission to the program. However, what wasn't known, was that on the given accounts, friends of that profile also had their data made available to developers, even if they made such data private.

In response to this, Google+ will be shutting down for regular users. Despite Google's efforts to keep the platform alive after it has been struggling since its launch in 2011, Google+ will not be available after August of 2019. Names, email addresses, occupation, gender, and age were all accessible, given that developers knew how to make use of the flaw.

To prevent such issues from occurring again, Project Strobe will be introduced. This method will better secure third party APIs with Google services, allowing for less data to be given to outside applications.

Source

 

[PlushBun]

Who wants to celebrate this with me?

ME ME ME ME ME I WANT TO CELEBRATE WITH YOU!!!!

 

[JimmyCall]

Google Plus the place where you could send a message to the likes of Linus Torvalds, or Mark Shuttleworth and there was a good chance they'd read it and reply.

G+ was also the best place for table top Role-Playing content and news.

 

[Bladexdsl]

never used it anyway

 

[thekarter104]

Too bad Miiverse didn't stand longer than Google+

 

[pustal]

And nothing of value was lost.

Seriously, who used Google+?

YES! Thank you! No more shit-ass Google Plus.

Good fucking riddance. Shit was such a joke.

Literally no one cares

Congratulations, now you guys can celebrate the monopoly of Facebook/Instagram, for all the good it has done to the world. Google+ doesn't have many active users but just enough to be called competition and offer a viable alternative to many.

 

[RattletraPM]

Congratulations, now you guys can celebrate the monopoly of Facebook/Instagram, for all the good it has done to the world. Google+ doesn't have many active users but just enough to be called competition and offer a viable alternative to many.

Eh, I honestly doubt it could be considered proper competition.

Depending who you ask it to, Google+'s active user count in 2018 varies from 100 to 400 million, which might sound okay until you realize it would be able to barely beat Twitter and Reddit at best, or to be beaten by basically every other major social network and messaging app at worst. To add insult to injury, considering that G+ was forced on YouTube and a few other Google services, the number of users who actually used the service instead of just "being active" would probably be way less, which isn't hard to believe considering that Google itself said the average usage time was around a couple of seconds ("coincidentally" the time needed to usually check your notifications and log out)...

 

[AtsuNii]

good riddance is all i can say about it, now the other one

 

[leon315]

But Google+ is a system app and i'm unable to remove it without ROOT!!!

 

[Ryccardo]

I thought this shut down awhile ago. Or was that a different Google social media thing?

That's Buzz, their twitter imitation (or maybe Wave, their... uh, office sharepoint? alternative) - both were allegedly replaced by G+

 

[RattletraPM]

That's Buzz, their twitter imitation (or maybe Wave, their... uh, office sharepoint? alternative) - both were allegedly replaced by G+

Thinking about it, it's pretty crazy to look back and see how many services and products Google experimented with and then silently killed not too long after.
Imo Wave is the only one that I was sad to see go, it was really ahead of its time (but a bit too cluttered). For the others, well... not so much.

 

[PrincessLillie]

Google+? Never knew 'em.
Seriously though, this isn't the least bit surprising. It was a failed venture from the start. I am concerned about how the Google services that relied on it will work now, though. One that comes to mind is YouTube comments.

 

[WhiteMaze]

When you need to force your own customers and users into using something, it is bound to fail sooner or later.

How a multi-billion dollar corporation, with the best advisors money can buy, failed to understand this simple fact, is beyond me.

 

[whaty671]

this is so sad. can we save google+?

 

[SilverWah]

Fucking finally. I remember it being a pain in the ass when Google had the brilliant idea to link this shit with Youtube and you needed it to make a channel.
It was awful.

 

[whaty671]

Fucking finally. I remember it being a pain in the ass when Google had the brilliant idea to link this shit with Youtube and you needed it to make a channel.
It was awful.

Who cares, that was the only way.

 

[goldensun87]

I am concerned how this shutdown will affect Youtube accounts.

 

[FAST6191]

I am concerned how this shutdown will affect Youtube accounts.

I am sure google can muster up a couple of software engineers to copy the comments database/table (I shall spare a contemplation of how replacing it with random data would probably be an improvement) into another table and redirecting reads to it.

 

[RattletraPM]

I am sure google can muster up a couple of software engineers to copy the comments database/table (I shall spare a contemplation of how replacing it with random data would probably be an improvement) into another table and redirecting reads to it.

Hell, at the very lest things will get better after they remove G+ integration from the comments. Maybe they'll actually finally fix that dislike button?

Spoiler

And if somehow they fuck it up and remove all comments altogether it'll be a really good improvement

 

[CrossOut]

Now Youtube will have to undergo another update to remove google plus from it. I wonder how their new streaming service for games will turn out? No doubt my connection will never be good enough to use it.

 

[Deleted User]

Looks like bobs army finally won