Google to shut down Google+ after failing to disclose user data leak (theguardian.com).
This March, as Facebook was coming under global scrutiny over the harvesting of personal data for Cambridge Analytica [Latest Picks 18th Mar. 2018], Google discovered a skeleton in its own closet: a bug in the API for Google+ had been allowing third-party app developers to access the data not just of users who had granted permission, but of their friends.
Oh dear, seemingly similar and at the same time last year as Facebook’s fuck-up which saw nawty boy Zuck dragged before US Congress and EU bureaucrats to pout lip and promise to do better. But Google had decided to keep it quiet until now, seemingly hoping that disclosure now after much of the fuss has died down will just let them kill what has been “failing” as much as any data they didn‘t earlier disclose since its inception, in announcing the closure Google acknowledging that Google+ failed to gain significant traction with consumers (variety.com).
“The consumer [i.e. “free” non-business] version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement: 90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds,” the company said in a statement.
With those remembering all the arm-twisting to get you to tie all their other services to a Google+ real name supplying account in 2011 won’t be sorry at all to see it die despite having never used it (I support pseudonymity).
Google said on Monday that it will phase out Google+ over the next 10 months. The company plans to keep Google+ up and running as an enterprise communications tool.
Which seemingly helps explains why they have recently been in a bid to make most of services such as GoogleTube independent of Google+ again (thedroidguy.com, Sept. 2018).
Seemingly the data of around 500,000 users shared included profile information and email addresses but not personal messages and Google didn’t find any evidence that any developers had exploited the bug, but seemingly they didn’t find any evidence that they didn’t either, maintaining logs of API use for just two weeks.
Updated 11th December 2018
Google+ to shut early after second bug revealed (bbc.co.uk).
This one not only discovered “recently” but seemingly “introduced” recently too, in November, after they had already decided to can it after keeping shtum about the original data leaking bug for eight months. Oh dear.
“With the discovery of this new bug, we have decided to expedite the shutdown of all Google+ APIs [application programming interfaces]; this will occur within the next 90 days,” wrote David Thacker, head of product management for G Suite, Google’s range of apps offered to businesses.
“In addition, we have also decided to accelerate the sun-setting of consumer Google+ from August 2019 to April 2019.”
An accelerated closure of five months during which the service would there embarrassingly being used even less than it is already by anyone not really that bothered with not even the potential of a social loose end to tie up on their account. But keen to tug on silver lining in that the “problem” was discovered by staff “via routine testing” and that again their was no evidence it had been exploited by those “bad actors” who must really be sitting around exploiting in a fit of ennui having found there few roles to audition for in Saint Petersburg.
And while it may have hoped to not be in the same admittedly tepid rather than hot water as Facebook and Twitter, having declined to testify to Congress a few months back (Latest Picks 6th Sept. 2018), it seems, like admittance of the bugs, it can only be delayed for so long with chief executive Sundar Pichai appearing today in Washington to face a Congressional committee:
The hearing is to discuss concerns of political bias across Google’s products, but will almost certainly stray into other areas of the company’s work, such as its ambitions in China, and complaints about how the company treats its female employees.
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