So Long, Google+

I’ll remember our time together fondly.

From The Guardian

This March, as Facebook was coming under global scrutiny over the harvesting of personal data for Cambridge Analytica, Google discovered a skeleton in its own closet: a bug in the API for Google+ had been allowing third-party app developers to access the data not just of users who had granted permission, but of their friends.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s almost exactly the scenario that got Mark Zuckerberg dragged in front of the US Congress. The parallel was not lost on Google, and the company chose not to disclose the data leak, the Wall Street Journal revealed Monday, in order to avoid the public relations headache and potential regulatory enforcement.

Disclosure will likely result “in us coming into the spotlight alongside or even instead of Facebook despite having stayed under the radar throughout the Cambridge Analytica scandal”, Google policy and legal officials wrote in a memo obtained by the Journal. It “almost guarantees Sundar will testify before Congress”, the memo said, referring to the company’s CEO, Sundar Pichai. The disclosure would also invite “immediate regulatory interest”.

Shortly after the story was published, Google announced that it will shut down consumer access to Google+ and improve privacy protections for third-party applications.

5 Replies to “So Long, Google+”

  1. I could never understand how that thing worked. On a more positive note, that’s one less Google account for my office to keep track of…

  2. I liked the idea of it quite a bit, but found the format occasionally user-hostile.

    But clearly I belong on a blürg for rugged men not unlike myself.

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