Google says shutting down Google+ following privacy vulnerability

Google is shutting down its social network, Google+, the arm of Alphabet Inc. announced Monday.

The company cited two major factors in its decision to end the service: its small and unengaged user base, and a newly announced privacy lapse affecting up to 500,000 users. The consumer version of Google+ will be wound down over 10 months, ending by August, the company said. It said 90% of Google+ user sessions last less than five seconds. The enterprise version of Google+ is to continue. Google said it discovered the privacy vulnerability in March, which allowed third-party apps using the Google+ Application Programming Interface to access personal details that the user had marked as private, including name, work experience, birth date, email address and places lived.
Shortly before Google's Monday announcement, the Wall Street Journal reported that Google executives were informed of the privacy breach in March, at which point they fixed the gap but chose to not disclose it to its users or the public for fear of tarnishing its image. According to the report, a memo that Google's legal team prepared for senior executives said that going public with the breach would likely trigger "immediate regulatory interest" at a time when Facebook Inc. was coming under fire for not preventing the data firm Cambridge Analytica from accessing troves of user information.