Google is ending the consumer version of its social network, Google+, sooner than later because of a second bug that may have “impacted” some 52.5 million users.
In October, the tech giant originally announced the shutdown after it discovered that an initial bug gave outside developers access to the private data of hundreds of thousands of Google+ users between 2015 and March 2018.
The company did not initially report the bug, which exposed Google+ user’s full names, email addresses, birth dates, and more to the public reportedly based off concerns it would be compared Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Now, Google said it’s found a second bug in the network that once again possibly affected 52.5 million users. The company said the latest bug was introduced during a software update in early November and fixed within a week.
While the company said it didn’t find any evidence that developers missed the data during that time, the issue fast-tracked its Google+ shutdown schedule.
“With the discovery of this new bug, we have decided to expedite the shut-down of all Google+ APIs; this will occur within the next 90 days,” David Thacker VP, Product Management, G Suite said in a blog post. “In addition, we have also decided to accelerate the sunsetting of consumer Google+ from August 2019 to April 2019. While we recognize there are implications for developers, we want to ensure the protection of our users.”
