Google announced that it will be shutting down its social media website Google Plus last year due to a major security incident that affected nearly 500,000 accounts. Even though the website failed to compete against the likes of Facebook, the platform has seen a small but loyal user base. Google finally revealed its shutdown timeline and has requested users to back up their data in time.
The shutdown process will be complete by April 2019, but there are some other important dates and information to keep in mind as well. Users will no longer be able to create accounts new Google Plus profiles from February 4th. Blogger will no longer support comments from the platform as well from the same date. Google Plus sign in buttons will be replaced by Google sign in button, but we don’t have a specified date for when the change will go into effect.
Community owners and moderators on the platform will have access to more downloadable data from March 2019 which includes not just images but posts as well. All accounts will be shut down on April 2 and photos from user archives, and Google+ pages will be removed. Users can back up their photos to Google Photos if they do not want to lose their data.
The whole deletion process is expected to take a few months which means that some users will be able to access their Google Plus accounts past the end date. Enterprise users will not be losing access to the service as Google Plus will live on as a G Suite exclusive service and some improvements will be made to the aging social media platform as well. If you want to backup all your data, you can use Google TakeOut or Google+ Exporter to get the job done.
What do you think about Google Plus shutting down? Let us know in the comments below. And also, don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Thanks!