Google Schedules the Death of a Struggling Platform

Google has finally announced the death of its Google+ Platform. It's been a long time coming, we all knew this change had to come.

Since inception, 'though it was a "beaut", the platform had struggled to keep users engaged and enticed. The likes of Facebook, tweets of Twitter and the ever-increasing stories of Instagram were actively pushing the data giant's social media network into the realms of darkness. It had seemingly become a place where only die-hard Google fans and technology enthusiasts lurked.

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. The consumer version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement: 90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds.

The data giant explained their "Project Strobe", which is in line with the ongoing and highly apparent push for data security and protection by data holders in 2018. Shutting down Google+ (consumer version) is one of the steps the company is taking to ensure that they are current and compliant.  Google will complete the shuttering of the customer version of Google+ by August 2019, giving customers (the few) a period of approx. 10 months to make a smooth transition. The company will however keep the service going for enterprise customers:

we have many enterprise customers who are finding great value in using Google+ within their companies. Our review showed that Google+ is better suited as an enterprise product where co-workers can engage in internal discussions on a secure corporate social network.

Farewell Google+! _{(consumer version)}

Read the official Google release: https://www.blog.google/technology/safety-security/project-strobe