Google Plus is About to Get the Axe, Learn Why

Most of us perceive Google as one the most successful companies in the world, but even they are not safe from making mistakes and facing huge setbacks. Shortly after announcing they were backing down from their bid to be one of the contenders to win the contract to handle all the data of the Pentagon. The Internet giant has announced that Google+ is about to go the way on the Do-do in the next ten months due to two main reasons: The Wall Street Journal breaking a story about a massive security breach on the platform and low user engagement.

The Press Release of Shame
According to the report made by the WSJ, the company discovered the bug on March of this year. Sources pointed out that many developers had pointed out the problem since 2015 and the company chose not to acknowledge the problem until this year. Google kept the information on a lid until now to protect their resources and prevent any damage to their image. The bug itself originated on a People API that left an opening for third-party developers to get access to profiles set on private affecting almost 500,000 users.

Damage Control and a Realization
At the moment Google has stated repeatedly that no third party abused this opening, mainly because no one seemed to know that it existed. They also claim that in all that time no one extracted data to use it the wrong way. Another problem is also plaguing the platform, and this one has been a longstanding trait of it: no uses Google+ for anything else other than signing up to outside websites. Direct engagement of users with their Google+ dashboard has been universally measured to last on average no more than 10 seconds. As you can probably imagine that’s very discouraging.

The Future of Google+
Google+ is a tool that was meant to be the answer to Facebook, but it has fallen short on all accounts. Despise the company trying to keep it alive for almost seven years now. At the present moment, Google has announced that the platform will remain in place and working as usual since many companies seem to handle their internal communications among employees by using the chat services available on the platform. The company has made vows to keep an ongoing investigation regarding any data leakage, but the most likely scenario is that come this time next year Google+ will be no more, and no one else will notice or care enough about it.