Following a massive data breach that exposed users' profiles, Google announced that it would be ending support for its social networking service, Google+. Shortly after that, another leak affected user data, prompting Google to accelerate its plan to shut down the service. Now, the company has released an official timeline detailing exactly how the process will unfold.
New users will not be accepted to the social networking service from February 4th onwards. On the same date, comments on Blogger that originate from Google's social networking service will be removed. The same will happen with other websites, with comments being removed by March 7th.
On April 2, the company will delete all user data from Google+, except for Google Notes, which will be retained for legal reasons. The user data that will be deleted will include photos and videos stored in the Albums folder and on Google+ pages.
Users can download the data they want to keep by following the instructionsprovided by the company. Additionally, if someone has backed up their photos and videos to Google Photos, they will find them intact in the cloud storage.
We should also emphasize that if someone has used Google+ to log in to other websites, they will need to log in again. In some cases, the Google+ login button will be replaced by the Google login button to make access easier.
The entire service shutdown process will be completed within a few months, as it will take enough time to delete all user data.
