When Google announced that they were shutting down Google+ or at least the consumer version of it, people weren’t really that surprised given the confusing development of the service the past few years. The good thing was that they announced it way ahead of the official closure date of April 2 but the bad news is that some may have already forgotten this piece of news by now. So Google saw fit to remind us what will be happening to the various versions of Google+ leading up to that date.
Consumer users still have a couple of months to get their affairs in order and back up any content that they may have uploaded to the service. By April 2, Google already starts deleting all the content from the consumer accounts, including pages, photos, and videos. So if you have any that you need to download and back up, start doing it now before you forget it again and suddenly you find yourself losing all that data.
If you belong to an organization that uses G Suite, you don’t have to worry (if ever you were worried) because the enterprise version of Google+ will continue to live. If the email address you used to sign up for Google+ is part of G Suite, then you don’t have to do anything. This includes businesses who use the paid version and those that have it for free. Admins will have to review the technical details that you have to do before the shut down begins.
As for the app developers who use Google+ APIs in their services, the sunset for you is much earlier. The wind-down process has already begun so if you use Google+ sign-ins and requests for Google+ OAuth scopes, you might have noticed some API failures already. The full shutdown will be March 7.
Has this shutdown of the consumer version and the Google+ APIs affected you or your business in any way? Let us know in the comments.
SOURCE: Google+
