By Pascal Oparada (Social Media/Tech Reporter)
The failed social media arm of Google, Google+, today began the final journey to shut down.
In an email sent to users, the company said the social media platform would cease to operate for consumers from April 2.
“This is a reminder that on April 2, 2019, we’re shutting down consumer Google+ and will begin deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts. Photos and videos from Google+ in your Album Archive and your Google+ pages will also be deleted,” the company wrote in the email.
The company urged users to archive whatever material they may have on the platform. These include contacts, materials shared for research, G Suit Market Place. Google Play, Google photos, locations and others.
The company said no other Google products such as Gmail, YouTube, Google Drive and Google Photos will be affected in the shutdown.
In October last year, Google announced it will shut down the platform for lack of profitability and exposure of a bug which affected over 500,000 accounts which led to data theft.
Shortly after the story was published, Google announced that it was shutting down consumer access to the platform and improve privacy protection for third-party applications.
Google+ was set up to rival other social media networks like Facebook but failed to do so over years, prompting its parent company, Alphabet to announce the shutdown.