A little less than two months ago, it was announced that Google+ would be closing its doors to consumers in August 2019 following a three-year-long data breach. Now, Google's revealed that it's moving that date up to April 2019 thanks to, you guessed it, another data leak.
The bug that caused for this new round of leaked data was only around for six days (November 7 - November 13) before Google caught wind of it and terminated it. Data made available to developers includes the likes of users' names, email addresses, occupations, and age. This happened for 52.5 million people, but Google notes that, "no third party compromised our systems, and we have no evidence that the app developers that inadvertently had this access for six days were aware of it or misused it in any way."
In response to this, Google's cutting Google+'s lifeline a bit shorter.
We have also decided to accelerate sunsetting consumer Google+, bringing it forward from August 2019 to April 2019. We want to give users ample opportunity to transition off of consumer Google+, and over the coming months, we will continue to provide users with additional information, including ways they can safely and securely download and migrate their data.
Perhaps even more impactful, all Google+ APIs are scheduled to be completely shut down within the next 90 days.
Google+ will still stick around for enterprise use despite this latest round of leaked data, but it's clear that Google is eager to remove consumer access ASAP to avoid any additional slip-ups like this.
Google+ to shut down after vulnerability discovered that left customer data unprotected
