There was a lot of hope in the social network which was set by Google and although it started badly and never really got going properly, there were still users who sat on it. Some webmasters used the network to the very end, hoping to get better results in the Google SERPs, but for most of them, it has been more of a cemetery than a network for a long time. Now the gates will finally close after a system failure became public and caused a stir.
For years it has been whispered over and over again, when Google will finally end the experiment with their own social network. No one believed that the network would actually become popular. But Google stuck to it for a long time, keeping the doors open against all the other rumors and advice. But now the time has come: within the next ten months Google+ is to be closed and the reason given here is above all the growing demands of users, media and data protection. However, nobody really believes so, due to the now well-publicized data breach on Google+.
As it now became known, there was a system bug on Google+ that made up to 500,000 user accounts accessible to developers. It would thus be possible for third parties to be able to access private data unauthorized. As if that was not bad enough, the Wall Street Journal reported that since March 2018 Google had been aware of this bug in the Google+ People API, but that it did not go public. So no users were informed that their data may not be safe. Google explains that no misuse of the data could be detected and they saw no reason to announce. This makes the incident of course for privacy advocates and users not better. Even rumors that the error has even existed since 2015, do not make it better.
All in all, this is not good news for Google and the company now has a lot to take in. As with Facebook and the data leak, Google’s reputation will certainly suffer from the media reports. The positive thing about this is, probably this event will be the real reason to finally close the doors on Google+ and check off the chapter social network.
