Google+ Is Going Away

byMizEllie

208 followers

5 years ago

So I open my G Suites update this afternoon, (yes I didn't get out of bed until noon. ;) ) and I see that Google+ is shutting down. The G Suites blog says just April, but other sites report it will be final as of April 2nd. Guess they didn't want people to think it was an April Fool's Day joke.

Personally, I opened an account when directed to in Online Entrepreneur certification, but I almost never access it. That's probably why it's going away. Not because of me personally but because a large number of people have abandoned the platform. Additionally, there was a huge data leak last October.

According to arsTechnica.com, quoting from Google's support page, The whole site will be taken down, and everything will be deleted. "On April 2nd, your Google+ account and any Google+ pages you created will be shut down and we will begin deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts," the page reads.

What Happens To Data on Google+?

arsTechnica writes in their blog, "The whole deletion process sounds brutal. It won't just be the entire Google+ site that will be scrubbed from the Internet—Google+-powered comments on Blogger and other third-party sites will all be deleted, too. Users of Google+ have until April to download and save everything themselves, which they can do via this page."

Pulling this list from the G Suites blog, here's what the company recommends.

1. A new version of the Google+ Android app will be released on February 22, 2019. Your G Suite Android users will need to update the Google+ Android app before March 7, 2019 to continue using Google+ on their mobile devices. Old versions of the app will no longer be supported.
2. If your users own or moderate a community outside your domain and there are consumer contributions that they would like to keep, they should download and save them before April 2019. If they download the data now, they will get links to community posts. Starting early March 2019, they will also be able to download the author, body, and photos for every community post in a public community.
3. Google+ pages and events will be deleted for both G Suite and consumer users if there is content your users would like to keep, they should download and save it before April 2019. If they would like to keep their Google+ tagline, please have them download and save their Profile data.
4. Google+ gadgets in classic Google Sites will no longer work starting March 7, 2019, so you and your users may want to remove them. Google+ embeds in the new Google Sites will continue to work.
5. If your users opted in to the Google Play Services Public Beta Program, they may experience issues using Google apps like Gmail and Hangouts as we begin shutting down consumer Google+. To avoid any interruption in service, G Suite users can leave the Beta Program.

This public service announcement is completed.