Google Plus is Google’s social network platform with features like Picasa photo sharing and storing and similar features enjoyed by other social networking sites. It was in 2011 that Google plus was opened to everyone who had a Google + account. Google has not totally given up on Google+ but it is certainly shutting down classic Google plus following data exposure. The  ‘Classic’  user interface is being eliminated and there are several reasons for this. Below we have listed five reasons why Google is shutting down Google plus:

Google decided to shut the operations of Google plus after a security breach due to which data of around 5,00,000users were exposed. A bug was detected where data of users was accessed after they granted permission by third-party developers.

Low usage and low engagement were stated as another reason for the shutdown of Google plus. It has been observed that Google+ sessions last for just five seconds indicating the user’s loss of interest.

A bug was discovered in Google + People API that resulted in apps accessing data that was not public from Google+ profiles. Though it did not include information from Google+ posts it could access static information like name, gender, age, occupation and email. Google could not confirm the users influenced by the bug. The bug has been active from 2015 to 2019 so it could have caused unprecedented data breaches.

According to Project Strobe, one reason for closing Google + was that Google was facing problems in maintaining an effective Google+ product to meet the expectations of the consumers

The reputation of Google will be hit very badly and it will come under severe scrutiny.

Things to know about the shutdown of Google plus

Although the data leak was detected in March 2018 Google did not inform users about the leak

Google was concerned that if the news about data breach was made public there were bound to be comparisons with Facebook who had already faced a similar incident with data firm known as Cambridge Analytics

Google claimed that there was a lack of evidence to prove that any users profile data was being misused.

Low usage was being held responsible for shutting down Google+

Though the consumer version will shut down in 2019, the G+ version will continue to stay

Google + has decided to continue its use only for Enterprise users as they felt that it is not suitable as a social network for the consumer but only for companies. Google maintains that new Enterprise concentrated products will be announced by Google+ in the near future. Although Google’s internal investigation Project Strobe is examining security controls, the main aim is to identify places where privacy control must be strengthened. Google has finally reported that it will shut down Google+ totally by August 2019 allowing users to download all their data before the final curtain is drawn.