Google to close Google+ after admitting to security breach running since 2015

Google only got round to fixing the long-standing security flaw in March

Google has finally got round to shutting down its Google+ social network following reports of a security breach affecting half-a-million accounts.

The company issued the warning about the security breach last night in a blog posting by Google fellow and vice president of engineering Ben Smith.

The blog post about the decision, while less than surprising, revealed that Google had discovered, and covered up, a security breach in the platform, which could have led to some private data being compromised.

Google decided to keep quiet out of a mixture of fear for the share price and the fact that nobody had actually used the exploit

Estimates suggest that as many as half-a-million users' private details had been accessible via the bug since 2015, but after discovering it in 2018, and fixing it in March 2018, Google decided to keep quiet instead of issuing an alert. It claimed that there is no evidence that anyone had actually used the exploit and, hence, that there hadn't been a security breach (as such).

Google confessed as it revealed plans to close Google+ down.

There had been some discussion within the company about making Google+ a paid-for platform in order to give it some kind of unique selling point, but that has now been abandoned.

Instead, the technology will be used to create intranets for companies on the GSuite platform, like a version of Microsoft's Sharepoint.

Questions... need to be answered about what exactly Google knew, how long it knew it, and whether its users had a right to be be told a lot sooner

Google is normally quick to discontinue services that are either not as popular as planned or hoped for, or which don't make money. Google+, though, has been kept on life support pretty much since its formal launch in June 2011.

But there are still a number of questions that need to be answered about what exactly Google knew, how long it knew it, and whether its users had a right to be be told a lot sooner, especially as most of the accounts on Google+ will have been abandoned years ago.

Furthermore, Google is not slow to shame other organisations that fail, for example, to patch their software in reasonable haste.

The social network has been moribund for some time, with one source suggesting that 90 per cent of traffic to the site lasts less than five seconds.

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