Google+ was directionless over the past couple of years and it was only a matter of time before the company axed its failed social network. It decided to do so when it found out a major security bug that impacted nearly half a million users. Google said that it would shut down the service in 2019. However, the company has now discovered a new security bug which impacted 52.5 million users and has decided to shut down Google+ four months ahead of schedule.
Google announced today that it has discovered that the users were impacted by this security bug following a software update released in November. The bug affected a Google+ API which could have exposed data of up to 52.5 million users to apps using that API.
The company adds that it discovered this bug during its own testing procedures and fixed it within a week. It says that there’s no evidence of app developers accessing this API to get to the data for the six days that Google was aware of the vulnerability.
It has now decided to expedite the shut down of Google+. The consumer face of the social network will now shut down four months early in April 2019. It’s going to shut down access to all Google+ APIs within the next 90 days.
Filed in . Read more about Google and Google+. Source: blog.google