Google+, once considered to be a major threat to Facebook and Twitter, has reached the end of the road.Google+, the social networking platform by Google, which was once considered to be a major threat to Facebook and Twitter, has reached the end of the road as the search engine giant began the process of shutting it down.
Google has already begun with the deletion of all consumer accounts on the social network. On Tuesday, the G+ profiles of CEO Sundar Pichai, ex-CEO Eric Schmidt, and the group’s co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were deleted, Business Insider reported.
Now, if a user visits plus.google.com address, they will not get to see any social media posts, instead the page reads “Looks like you’ve reached the end.” But what led to the downfall of Google’s social networking platform? There is not one specific answer to this but many, including “low usage” and security concerns.
In 2018, the search engine giant had disclosed two significant data leaks that could have exposed information of millions of Google+ users to outside developers. The first security leak prompted Google to decide that it was time to close Google+, the company had planned to initially shutdown the platform by August 2019. However, the second leak led the technology giant to accelerate the shutdown plan by four months to April.
Also read: Google+ shutting down on April 2: How to download, save your data
As far low usage is concerned, Google acknowledged that the social network failed to meet the company’s expectations. Back in October 2018, when Google first announced the shutdown of Google+, VP of Engineering Ben Smith had written in a blog post that 90 per cent of consumer Google+ sessions are less than five seconds.
