G+ LoME Archive
Post P5a5fDQpgZx
Andre Polykanine, Tamas Ferencz, Lokyt L., Discussion

Tamas Ferencz Oct 08, 2018 (21:20)

Google will be shutting down Google+ for consumers ☹️, but will continue Google+ for enterprise customers

To give people a full opportunity to transition, we will implement this wind-down over a 10-month period, slated for completion by the end of next August (2019). Over the coming months, we will provide consumers with additional information, including ways they can download and migrate their data.

This comes at the end of a detailed security audit Google calls "Project Strobe".

They did find a bug in one of the Google+ APIs that have some apps access to Profile fields that were shared with the user, but not marked as public, including name, email address, occupation, gender and age. Up to 500,000 accounts were affected. That was patched in March 2018.

Why is Google killing the consumer version of Google+?

* They found "significant challenges in creating and maintaining a successful Google+ that meets consumers’ expectations"

* The consumer version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement: 90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds.

* Our review showed that Google+ is better suited as an enterprise product where co-workers can engage in internal discussions on a secure corporate social network. Enterprise customers can set common access rules, and use central controls, for their entire organization. We’ve decided to focus on our enterprise efforts and will be launching new features purpose-built for businesses.

Details about the Google+ People API
https://developers.google.com/+/web/api/rest/latest/people

Project Strobe: Protecting your data, improving our third-party APIs, and sunsetting consumer Google+
Findings and actions from Project Strobe—a root-and-branch review of third-party developer access to Google account and Android device data and of our philosophy around apps’ data access.

Andre Polykanine Oct 08, 2018 (21:56)

+Tamas Ferencz For our case, I'd consider https://groups.io. It primarily is a groups service (indeed!), but it has a pleasant web interface, robust e-mail capabilities, and also supports wikis, databases, files, photos, hashtags, subgroups and what not :). I'm not affiliated with them, but I've been holding some groups there for quite a long time, and the service seems great to me. Your thoughts?)

Tamas Ferencz Oct 08, 2018 (22:16)

+Andre Polykanine thank you, I will check it out:

Lokyt L. Oct 09, 2018 (15:42)

Alright, this brings a question: is there a way of making a backup of this G+ page (smarter than just copying it manually)?

Tamas Ferencz Oct 09, 2018 (15:44)

+Lokyt L. according to the announcement Google will write to all users telling them how they can download/migrate their content; whether that applies to saving entire communities, I don't know.