Google Plus Shutting Down After Undisclosed Data Bug

Google is responsible for the world’s most popular online search engine and mobile operating system, as well as a range of other widely used products. The tech company, however, failed to make significant inroads as a social media company.

After a strange series of events that included an undisclosed data breach, Google will shut down Google Plus, the Wall Street Journal first reported. Google made the news official in a Monday blog post, largely about a new internal privacy initiative called Project Strobe.

According to the Wall Street Journal’s report, Google decided to shut down Google Plus after the discovery that a “software glitch” gave developers access to detailed data about its users, from 2015 until March.

That meant nearly 500,000 Google Plus users could have had everything from their full names to their home addresses up for grabs, though Google found no evidence that any of that information was misused. Google never publicly disclosed the data breach at the time of its discovery, contrary to how Facebook handled its latest privacy scandal.

An internal company memo obtained by the Journal detailed Google's decision to not make the news public. The Cambridge Analytica issue had just surfaced for Facebook and Google wanted to avoid a similar public backlash. Google was not legally required to do anything more than what it did in resolving the problem, the memo stated.

The glitch made Google Plus a liability, and a sparsely used one, at that. Originally launched in 2011, Google’s answer to Facebook had the unique hook that posts could be curated to specific “circles” of friends. A user could make it so a post would only be visible to family, co-workers or any other combination of people they chose.

However, Google Plus failed to consistently peel users away from Facebook. Attempts to integrate Google’s other services like Gmail and YouTube into Plus often forced users to sign up for service they did not want to use.

In recent years, Google quietly untethered Plus from most of those services.

The recently enforced General Data Protection Regulation in Europe requires companies like Google to alert authorities about breaches within 72 hours or face a fine.

The E.U. hit Google with a large fine earlier this year on antitrust grounds.