Google+ to be shut down soon

Google has announced that they are closing the consumer functionality of Google+, their social media platform, due lack of adoption and an API bug that leaked the personal information of up to 500,000 Google+ accounts. [Internally Google+ will still be used.]

Google is claiming that the bug [so far] was not misused and shutting the service due to the security complexity [I guess look at Facebook] in addition to what they claimed they has so few users actually used the service for any length of time.

In a blog statement, they said that “The consumer version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement: 90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds.” I would assume that is an average as it’s almost impossible to be on for 5 seconds.

Or maybe they shut it down because they know they can’t compete against Facebook.

I still remember early on that if you created a Google/Gmail account, they would automatically create a Google+ account for you without telling you. It was possibly [on purpose] their way to catch up to Facebook in the number of accounts. But if you didn’t know you had an account, how could you use it? Google could say they have 500,000 Google+ accounts.

While at it, I wonder if that 500,000 accounts number is legitimate. From previous reports, it wasn’t doing that well.

Another web site said there are 34 million unique visitors per month which is not that impressive for 395 million supposedly active accounts – not 500 million – and two-third are male and a bit more than half are from the US.

If you claim to have 500,000 accounts, why would you shut down the service permanently instead of keeping it alive and fixing the bug? 500,000 accounts doesn’t seem to be “due lack of adoption”.

But according to a report by the Wall Street Journal, the bug in the Google+ API existed between 2015 and March 2018, which was when Google discovered and fixed the bug. So, if fixed, why shut it down? But then they added “disclosing the incident would likely trigger “immediate regulatory interest”

In any case, this is Google’s third social media platform that they have closed up.

Google+ will slowly wind down over the next few months.