When one bug triggers an end date, and then a second one speeds up the process, maybe Google Plus ending is a good thing.
The first end date for Google+ was sometime in August 2019. Nearly a year after the first breach fo the once-promising social network. The original breach affected approximately 500,000 of its 390+ million monthly users.
Ending a social platform after a bug that affects less than 0.025% of its global users is rare. Most companies, including those as large as Alphabet, the parent of Google, can with withstand such breaches and move on to the next case. Google+’s problem, however, was that nobody was using it on the scale to warrant general security upkeep.
Because Google keeps user data private, the estimate of monthly users was less than one-quarter of registered users. Average viewership of content shared on the network was low. Goldfish-level low. At least 90 percent of all users only viewed content for 5 seconds. Moreover, this was all before the second data breach.
A new software bug hastened the ending of Google+ from sometime in August to April 2, 2019.
The definitive date came on the heels of a breach that affected over 52 million users. Remember how we said the actual user number was entirely different from registrations? This breach left vulnerable user’s names, occupations, ages, and email addresses “even if access was set to private.” What was once a problem for 0.025% was now a glaring issue for at least 15%.
Google plus ending signals a new chapter for social networks. Even the most prominent companies won’t get everything right, which could be all the more reason to pull back the curtain to see what information you’re sharing online.
