So Long, Google Plus: Good Bye to the Social Network That Never Was

Over the weekend, Google made it official with an email sent to everybody who has a Google Account: “Your personal Google+ account is going away on April 2, 2019”.

Not all of these accounts are necessarily gmail accounts (although most of them probably are); as a gmail account is not (and never had been) a requirement for a Google account – you might therefore receive this email on your “regular” email address, given you’ve ever used said email address to sign up for a Google account.

Google first announced in October 2018 the sunsetting of Google+, which went widely unnoticed; and then again in December 2018.

Unnoticed? Yes. Mainly because since the death of Authorship in 2014 and the deprecation of rel=author markup and the rise of Structured Data Markup or Schema Google+ was no longer useful for authors.
And because I never really understood the “Communities and Collections” concept.

Same goes for the rel=publisher markup: you are encouraged to use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to check your individual implementation.

A quick check this morning revealed I hadn’t posted anything to Google+ since 2016: it’s fair to say I won’t miss it that terribly.

Depending on which account type you use to log in, the messages at the top vary – this one for example says “Your Google+ page and any other Google+ pages you manage are going away on April 2, 2019.”

And while Chrome at this point still has a “Install Google+” menu option, I assume the next update will no longer include it.

Other things I won’t miss about Google+?
The utter disaster and confusion Google+, Google+ Local, Google+ Local Business (formerly known as Google Places?) pages as well as brand accounts repeatedly caused.
Hopefully Google sticks with and keeps working on their current “Google My Business” implementation: although still not the best thing since sliced bread, it’s at least halfway stable and works most of the time.

So as of today, we have removed all links to Google+ from our website, including our authors’ profiles and social sharing options.