Google announced that it is shutting down Google+ after years of failing to gain traction with the public, as well as a bug that could have exposed the data of 500,000 accounts. While there is no evidence that the bug was used to leak user data, the company decided to shut it down because the complexity and functionality of a social network was not worth the effort.
“Our developers have put a lot of work and effort into building a fully functional social network, Google+, but unfortunately it is not being used by users and developers,” a Google blog post said. “The version of the platform intended for ordinary users (and not developers) has very low usage compared to our initial expectations. 90% of our visitors stay on the page for less than 5 seconds.”.
The platform will be phased out over the next 10 months, and its functionality will only be available to Google employees.
The API bug
After Google conducted a test of the Google+ API, codenamed Project Strobe, it announced that it had found a bug that could leak hidden information about Google+ accounts. Through this bug, the user could see information about other accounts, such as the user's first and last name, email address, workplace, age, and gender.
As Google only keeps API usage logs for the last 2 weeks, it cannot know if this bug has ever been used, but it is certain that it was not used in the last 2 weeks.
