Say Goodbye to Google+
The Google-backed social network that seemed to flop from the beginning, Google+, has finally decided to just pack it up. There are a handful of people mourning, but they'll at least have a few months to mourn together+.
Unfortunately, the announcement of the platform's demise was made all the worse due to a data breach exposing the data of 500,000 Google+ users. As noted in the reports, the platform was a complete and utter failure on the consumer-side, but the enterprise and business utilizations aren't likely to go anywhere anytime soon.
Lawsuit+
On the same day that Google announced the shutdown of Google+, a class action case was filed against the web giant stemming from the data breach. Two users of Google+ allege that Google knew about the problems that led to the breach and did nothing for months.
Google has claimed that there was nothing malicious detected in the data breach, and that no developers had exploited the problems. But, as most web security experts would explain, just because there's no harm right now, that doesn't mean there won't be a foul later on.
Goodnight+
Rather than fixing the platform, engineers at Google realized that it just wasn't worth the effort. Apparently, 90% of Google+ user interactions with the platform were less than five seconds long, which is seemingly really bad given that practically no one uses the platform, unless it's part of an enterprise solution or part of a business's marketing plan.
Sadly, for that handful of people who "live on" the platform, losing the Google+ platform is a nightmare come true. One user started a Change.org petition that almost has 25,000 signatures.
Related Resources:
- Murder Victim's Fitbit Data Is Relevant (FindLaw's Technologist)
- CA Law Makes It Illegal to Sell Devices With Weak Passwords (FindLaw's Technologist)
- Politicians Seek Greater Online Consumer Privacy Protections (FindLaw's Technologist)