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Google Plus was developed at breakneck speed to counter the rising threat of Facebook in social. Launched in June 2011, Google Plus allowed users to post status updates and organized friends into groups called Circles. There was an instant messaging and video component called Hangouts, as well as a photo backup service.

In addition to being a social network, Plus was meant to be the social layer to all of Google’s other products. A user’s Google Plus profile was used for many other services, like YouTube. The ‘+1’ button was a competitor to Facebook’s ‘Like’ button and was present throughout the web.

Despite the attempts at company-wide integration, Google Plus never really took of among users. In November of 2015, Google unveiled a major redesign that put a renewed focus on Collections and Communities to create an interest-based social network instead.

Popular features like Hangouts and Google Photos were eventually spun out into their own separate and wildly popular product.

As Google+ goes dark, here’s what the social network meant to the 9to5Google team

Google Plus class action

After years of living in the shadow of the social media behemoths, Google’s ill-fated Google+ social network closes its doors today for good. I’d be hard to convince that G+ will be missed by the masses, but none can deny that a certain subset of Google fans and Android users found a community there unlike any other. Here’s what Google+ meant to us.


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[Update: goo.gl is dead] Google ‘Spring Cleaning’ kills off Inbox, Google+, more in the next few weeks

Google is notorious at this point for killing off products seemingly for no reason. Sometimes it’s a shame, other times it goes nearly unnoticed. In the next few weeks, though, Google is preparing to kill off quite a few beloved products including Inbox by Gmail, Google+, Allo, and its URL shortener.

Here’s a calendar of what’s coming and what’s being killed with Google’s “Spring Cleaning.”


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