Everybody! Stop what you’re doing!

We have huge news...

Google Plus is closing down!

“Um, what’s Google Plus?”

You know, Google Plus… Google’s attempt at social media… once one of the most hotly anticipated launches on the planet?

Doesn’t ring a bell?

Oh, wait, hang on a minute...We forgot that there is a reason it’s closing…nobody uses it and hardly anyone knows what it is!

You might vaguely recall that Google Plus was one of the big tech stories of recent times. The social networking service was supposed to be Google's big challenge to the social networking giants...but it didn't quite work pan out like that. So, in October 2018, Google Plus finally admitted defeat and decided to slink away into the sunset, probably deciding to focus on more big picture things like, flying cars, or how to get wifi on Mars - you know, the normal stuff…

So, the BIG question is - does anyone care? We did a quick check around the Six Ticks office to see how many team members actively use Google Plus.

- The answer was a big fat zero.

So, if our team of techie addicts aren’t on board, then that’s a sign that it is a thing of the past.

Nobody Cared

So, will anyone else miss Google Plus?

Probably not.

In their end of days announcing blog post, they admitted that it just wasn’t worth going on, stating that incredibly, 90% of Google Plus users were engaging with the service for less than five seconds at a time.

When you compare that to Facebook’s reported rate of engagement of 50 minutes for users on Instagram, Messenger and Facebook platform, Google Plus was just a very small drop in a very big, and very competitive, ocean.

Stats about users are varied, but some reports say that Google Plus has just 111 million active users, which sounds like a lot, but when you compare that to Facebook’s one billion, it’s peanuts.

What’s more, Twitter, Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, WeChat, SnapChat are all on the list of social networking sites with more users than Google Plus. And to twist that knife in just a little bit more, a whole bunch of these companies are owned by Facebook. Market domination is an understatement.

Security Issues

Google confirmed the closure by saying:

“While our engineering teams have put a lot of effort and dedication into building Google Plus over the years, it has not achieved broad consumer or developer adoption, and has seen limited user interaction with apps.”

But there’s more. During an audit, Google discovered that there was a security breach related to the Google Plus People API’s, meaning that user data was at risk, as well as the data of their friends and contacts.

So, the poor engagement was not the only reason Google swiftly brought the curtain down on a service, which will join the likes of Atari’s ET videogame and Google Glass, as a much-hyped tech product that flopped big time.

Still Big Business?

We should mention that although Google Plus will be closing its public use, Google says that the enterprise version of Google Plus will continue to run and be developed. But with Facebook’s Workplace and Slack already competing, Google Plus might be better off just walking away.

So, in conclusion, it appears that Google Plus will be a distant memory that we’ll not even remember enough about to tell our grandchildren about.

Thanks for joining us to say goodbye to a minor piece of digital history. Remember for all the latest tech news, and some amazing web development projects, visit Six Ticks’ Blog now!