In October of last year, Google revealed that it had leaked its users" personal data and that it had decided to shut down Google+ in August 2019 as a consequence. Then, in December, another security issue involving an API bug caused the Mountain View giant to kill off the social network even sooner - in April.
Until now, it wasn"t clear when exactly the service would bid its farewell to consumers, but Google announced that today. Google+ will effectively be shut down on April 2, on which date the company will begin deleting user profiles and any data stored on them, including photos. If, for some reason, you have any pictures only on Google+, you"ll need to retrieve them before that date.
If you"re a developer, you"ll start feeling the impact of the shutdown even sooner, as Google+ APIs will be effectively terminated on March 7. Even before then, you may start to notice intermittent failures with the APIs, so it"s a good time to start thinking about removing them. If you use Google+ Sign-in, you can migrate to the newer Google Sign-in API with this guide.
Finally, for business users, Google maintains that it will continue to invest on Google+ for G Suite customers and that those accounts will remain active. However, as a result of the shutdown of the consumer version of the platform, you may want to be aware of some changes, which Google explains here. These include a new mandatory update for the Google+ app which will be released on February 22 and must be installed before March 7.
Due to the low usage of Google+ and the security concerns that led to its death, it"s unlikely that the service will be missed by many. If you did use it, however, you"ll want to recover any data you have on your profile or pages before April 2.