Google+ comes to an end as Google Currents for Android, iOS launches

As telegraphed last month to G Suite admins, Google Currents is exiting beta and entering general availability today. The social network shut down last April, but Google is keeping the service alive for enterprise customers that need an internal way to communicate with employees.

This launch is starting with a rebrand of Google+ for Android and iOS to Google Currents. The latest version introduces the blue waveform-like icon and gives the application a Google Material Theme redesign.

The core UI is mostly unchanged with a home stream ordered by relevance (or chronology), while posts from company leadership can be given priority with a sparkle icon. Text, links, images, and other content from Drive can be shared, along with polls. Otherwise, this internal community tool carries over the concept of “tags” and “streams” from Google+.

Besides the “updated look and feel,” new features include better content moderation and administrative privileges:

• Exchange ideas and documents, and have meaningful discussions with your colleagues — all without flooding your inbox.
• Enjoy the most important content first, with the ability to order your home stream by relevance or time.
• Connect with like-minded colleagues and find communities that match your interests.
  Follow tags on topics. Learn more about what is happening in other departments and across the organization with trending tags.
• Highlighted posts from your leadership keep you up-to-date on what’s important across your organization.
• Use Google’s advanced search to find topics and conversations that matter to you.

On the backend, existing plus.google.com URLs will continue to function and automatically redirect to currents.google.com. It’s a seamless update on mobile with the existing Google+ client just being updated over. Meanwhile, full availability is expected over the next five days.