What’s up with Google Plus?

The short answer: 1) Until March of this year, the potential existed for 3rd party apps to collect non-public user data and 2) Google Plus will be shutting down as a social network for consumers.

Here’s how Google explains the problem (emphasis theirs):

• Users can grant access to their Profile data, and the public Profile information of their friends, to Google+ apps, via the API.
• The bug meant that apps also had access to Profile fields that were shared with the user, but not marked as public.
• This data is limited to static, optional Google+ Profile fields including name, email address, occupation, gender and age. (See the full list on our developer site.) It does not include any other data you may have posted or connected to Google+ or any other service, like Google+ posts, messages, Google account data, phone numbers or G Suite content.
• We discovered and immediately patched this bug in March 2018. We believe it occurred after launch as a result of the API’s interaction with a subsequent Google+ code change.
• We made Google+ with privacy in mind and therefore keep this API’s log data for only two weeks. That means we cannot confirm which users were impacted by this bug. However, we ran a detailed analysis over the two weeks prior to patching the bug, and from that analysis, the Profiles of up to 500,000 Google+ accounts were potentially affected. Our analysis showed that up to 438 applications may have used this API.
• We found no evidence that any developer was aware of this bug, or abusing the API, and we found no evidence that any Profile data was misused.

Leaving Google Plus operational looks like a no win situation for Google. They’d have to throw considerable resources at a service that had been dwindling for several years. For better or worse, Google is known to be ruthless in killing off services with a declining user base. The shutdown of Google Plus for consumers will take place over the next 10 months. The service will remain available for business customers, for use as an internal social network.

At the risk of sounding like a Google apologist, I find it encouraging that the bug was discovered as a result of Google’s Project Strobe, a “root-and-branch review of third-party developer access to Google account and Android device data and of our philosophy around apps’ data access. “ As a result of this project, other Google and Android products are being updated to limit the data accessible to 3rd party apps. For example:

When an app prompts you for access to your Google account data, we always require that you see what data it has asked for, and you must grant it explicit permission.

Going forward, consumers will get more fine-grained control over what account data they choose to share with each app. Instead of seeing all requested permissions in a single screen, apps will have to show you each requested permission, one at a time, within its own dialog box. For example, if a developer requests access to both calendar entries and Drive documents, you will be able to choose to share one but not the other. Developers can read more on the Google Developer Blog.

Google Plus and your website

If your business had a page on Google Plus that was integrated with your website, you might want to unwind that. The good news is that the SEO impact of Google Plus has effectively been nil for some time. An overview is provided by this post on the BrightLocal blog, What Does the End of Google+ Mean for Local Businesses? The biggest loss will be for those who are active on Google Plus communities, and those folks will need to find alternatives before next August.

Note that Google Plus is not associated with Google My Business, which is still a very important service that allows you to control the information shown about your business in Google Search and Maps.

If you were an active Google Plus user, drop me a line and let me know what your reaction has been to the news of its demise and your plans for the future. Just click reply and I’ll get it.

Until next week.