The end is finally in sight for Google’s ill-fated social media venture Google+.
The company announced this week that Google+ will officially shut down April 2, after Google initially announced it would end the service back in fall.
Google acknowledged the main reason it’s shutting the social arm down, noting its low usage in a blog post announcing the end date. That, coupled with the struggle to live up to expectations and security concerns, has made Google+ simply not worth keeping around.
Google did not directly address the security concerns in its post, but a security flaw left nearly 500,000 users data exposed to third-party app developers. After that was fixed, another issue was found, which led to an earlier shut down date in April. Now, Google has revealed its full timeline to wind down the service.
The change means all Google+ accounts and pages will be deleted. Anyone with photos or other content they’d like to save on their account should download and save those files prior to the shutdown. Photos and videos will be backed up to Google Photos. However, any other posts or content on Google+ pages will be gone.
For anyone who is still an active user of Google+, there isn’t long to say goodbye either. Google said it will start removing the the ability to post and add to pages as early as Monday, Feb. 4.
