How in the world has this not already been a feature for Google accounts on all platforms? Today Google released a new system for profile imagery in Google accounts of all sorts, starting with Gmail. Google Illustrations are a collection of images provided by Google to the public for free to take the place of what'd otherwise be a profile photo.
Depending on who you ask, the name "Google Currents" will mean something different. Most will have no clue about it while some will remember it as one of Google's failed social experiments focused more on full-length magazine articles. Last year, however, Google reused that name for what would practically be its replacement for Google+ in G Suite. Now it is announcing that this new Google Currents will be leaving beta testing in July, finally laying Google+ to rest for good.
Google's habit of regularly and sometimes unceremoniously killing off its services and apps has become sort of a running joke that there are now websites dedicated to honoring those dearly and some not so dearly departed products. Some of those may have been forgotten after years of being buried and that may give Google a chance to recycle the name for something completely different. Just like Google Currents which is now the G Suite's replacement for another dead product: Google+.
The day of reckoning for Google+ has arrived, with the little-loved - and oft-mocked - social network shutting down, at least for individual accounts. Google signed the Google+ death warrant last year, initially planning to give the remaining loyalists until August 2019 before the plug would be pulled.
The Internet has a pretty long memory but if content gets taken down, they will eventually disappear for good. Fortunately, the Internet Archive exists to serve as both a museum and a library for the Internet's past, including the embarrassing ones. Soon, those will include even the publicly accessible Google+ posts that would have been forgotten forever if not for efforts of the loose collective that calls themselves "The Archive Team".
Google+ has had a long life, actually longer than anyone expected. What was supposed to be Google’s social hub almost turned into a ghost town, populated only by Google and Android developers. It was really only a matter of time and Google+ will finally be shutting down in April, at least for consumers. Before that happens, however, users might have to remember to pack up their stuff and move out first.
Very few will probably mourn the loss of Google+. Some might be even more surprised to hear it was still in operation after all these years. Google, however, probably couldn’t be rid of it fast enough because of how it has become an albatross around its neck. It has already pushed the shutdown of the service a month in advance but even before that, it will be shutting down the APIs that apps may still be using, surprisingly. In fact, those apps and API may start failing in January, which could make Google+’s death even more inglorious than it already is.
Ailing social network Google+ will be shuttered four months earlier than initially intended, after Google found another security bug the affected more than 52 million users. The search giant had initially announced it would close down Google+ in August of next year, a deadline that itself had been established because the social network was the inadvertent cause of a security lapse.
Google may have signed the death warrant for Google+ but some of its most devoted users are calling for a reprieve, with a Change.org petition demanding the oft-mocked social network be allowed to live on. The search giant announced that the writing was on the wall for Google+ earlier this month, conceding that the site it hoped to eventually overshadow Facebook and Twitter simply hadn't lived up to expectations.
Google+ may have been the butt of a million social network jokes, but before you cheer too loudly for its demise you should also give it the credit it deserves for launching one of Google's best products. The writing is on the wall for Google+, its creator confirmed today, beginning a ten month long sunsetting process that will end in August 2019.
Today Google announced they'd close Google+ for consumers - that means you, reader. This closure is due to several factors, the most important of these being the huge privacy bug uncovered this week by the Wall Street Journal. Other reasons aren't nearly as important - but they're there nonetheless. Besides the bug, Google+ never really got off the ground.
Google is shutting down Google+ for consumers, axing the little-loved social network in the aftermath of a huge privacy flaw it failed to reveal until months later. Launched in 2011 to great fanfare, Google+ was to be not only a social networking site to compete with Facebook, but a mechanism to authenticate identity online.