thearchivist.funGoogle+ shuts for consumers after a privacy review
Google announced in October 2018 that it would close the consumer version of Google+. The company said a review of privacy across its products, called Project Strobe, found a bug in the Google+ People APIs that could have exposed profile data of over 500,000 users, patched in March 2018. Google also said the product had very low engagement, with 90 percent of user sessions lasting under five seconds. On 10 December 2018 Google moved the closing earlier, to April 2019, after another bug in a later update. The consumer service closed on 2 April 2019, and comments on Google+ across other sites were deleted from that day. Archive Team ran a large rescue. Its wiki says hundreds of volunteers produced over 1.56 petabytes of WARC files in under four weeks, which it calls the group's largest action to date, with profiles listed as 98.6 percent saved and communities as partially saved.
Context and provenance
Two reasons were given at once: a security finding and weak use. The coverage was not the same for everything, because the wiki itself marks communities as only partly saved. A figure like 98.6 percent is the group's own measure of a profile list, not an audit of every post.
When using a Google+ post, note whether you found it in the Archive Team collection, the Wayback Machine or a personal export. The wiki treats profiles and communities differently, so a missing community post may be missing from the copy and not from the original. Say which source you searched.
Transmission timeline
- 2018-10-08
Google announces a ten-month wind-down of consumer Google+.
- 2018-12-10
Google brings the closing forward to April 2019 after a second bug.
- 2019-04-02
Consumer Google+ shuts down.
Why it matters
A product shut for a mix of privacy and low-use reasons was copied by volunteers at petabyte scale in weeks, showing both how fast rescue can be and how incomplete it can remain.
What remains uncertain
The 98.6 percent and 1.56 PB figures come from the community wiki, not from an audit. The 8 October 2018 date comes from the wiki, not from the Google post itself.
Sources and evidence
- XDA Developers: Google+ is shutting down for consumers (updated)
Project Strobe, 500,000-user API bug patched March 2018, 90 percent of sessions under five seconds, December 2018 acceleration, 2 April 2019 shutdown.
- Archive Team wiki: Google Plus
Announcement and shutdown dates, 1.56 PB of WARC files in under four weeks, 98.6 percent of profiles saved, communities partly saved, location at the Internet Archive.
Editorial review: 2026-10-22. New evidence may change this account.