Google Plus is saying its goodbyes. Google announced back in October 2018 that its own social service will shut down next year.
You might have heard of Google Plus while frequenting other forms of social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and even LinkedIn. However, you probably never really understood what it was or who even uses it. Google Plus wasn’t made to be your go to source to check out funny videos or food recipies, it was an identity service. The coined slogan for Google Plus is “Real-life sharing rethought for the web.”
This idea was pretty solid. You build new, social connections through Google Plus instead of relying on past connections. Google Plus even had interesting features such as Hangouts, allowing group chat with text and video for up to ten users. With Google’s pre-existing marketshare on the internet, brand power, and their unique innovation, how could this not be many people’s social media of choice?
There were many reasons why the tech giant made a losing bet on their own platform. It could have been that users were required to use their own identity when interacting, or that their main rival in Facebook had already gained too much traction. Google Plus seemed to never capture the feeling of a competive social space in order to draw in enough users.
Ultimately, the nail in the coffin for the big G, little plus, was the security problems with data and privacy. A software update in November 2018 created a bug impacting the data of almost 53 million users. In spite of this occurence, the service will close in April of this year, instead of August as previously planned.
Life in the online social sphere will continue on just the same without Google Plus, but who knows what Google might have planned for the future.