Google has announced today in a blog post that the company is going to shutdown the Google Plus consumer service over the next ten months. The reason stated by Google is a recent security lapse that compromised user profile data. In the blog post, Google also mentioned that the service has been suffering low usage and engagement since a long time. They also added that survey has showed them that 90% of Google Plus users spend less than 5 seconds. The time is shockingly low when it comes to social media engagement comparing the competition with other services. The main use of Google Plus is sharing common professional interests among people in the same professional field. Other than that, there is literally no popularity of Google Plus. So, keeping in mind, Google is thinking of rebuilding the enterprise services in some new way.
Other than this, Google has also said that they are delving deeper into the privacy adjustments of all Google services. New changes in API will be introduced that will limit the developers’ access to data on Android devices and Gmail. Henceforth, developers will no longer receive call log and SMS permissions on Android devices and contact interaction data will no more be available through the Android Contacts API.
Google will be updating the User Data Policy for the biggest mail service Gmail. In the Wall Street Journal, a write up was published that gave a detailed account of how easily third party apps can track information from Gmails. A Google spokesperson said, “Only apps directly enhancing email functionality — such as email clients, email backup services and productivity services (e.g., CRM and mail merge services) — will be authorized to access this data.”
