Google announcement of shutting down Google Plus for consumers by April 2, 2019
At the end of December 2018, Google has announced its decision of shutting down Google+ for consumers in April 2019. Google has taken this decision on encountering the low usage and the challenges in maintaining the successful product that is up to customer expectation.
This post is all about what you should do next, that includes how to download your photos & content and download and save from the Google Plus account.
On April 2nd your Google Plus account and associated Google page account you created will be shut down and Google will start its process of deleting the content from consumer Google+ accounts. All the photos and videos you kept in Album Archive and Your Google + pages will be deleted. Any video, photo, or contents you want to download and save can be done before April 2, 2019.
You should note now that your videos and photos that are backed up in Google Photos will not be deleted.
This process of deleting the Google+ Account, Google+ Page, Album Archive will be taking a few months time and that the content will be remaining as such through this period of time. Users will be able to still see parts of their Google activity via activity log and Google+ page content will keep on visible to the Gsuite users till the completion of the deletion process. After February 4th users will no more be able to create new Google+ account, new communities, pages or events.
If you’re a community owner or a moderator, you can backup (download and save) your data, video, photos and from March 2019 you can still backup additional details from public communities, including author, body, and photos for every communities post. Learn More
If you log in to sites using Google+ sign in button, you will not be able to use this button for logging in as this feature will stop working in the coming weeks and in the most cases, it will be replaced with Google Sign in button. So, you will be able to sign in using Google account wherever you see Google Sign in the button instead of Google Plus sign in button. Learn More
If you are using the Google+ accounts for commenting on your own or other sites, from February 4th you will no more be able to comment in blogger site and other sites from March 7th. All your Google+ comments will be deleted from April 2, 2019, on all sites. Learn More
If you are a Gsuite user, then your Google plus remains active and you can expect to experience new look, feel and additional features in Google+ and find a new way of working in the Google plus. Learn More
If you are a developer, then you must remove your authentication system done using Google+ and change to Google Sign in and remove any dependencies on Google plus APIs from their applications. Learn More
Conclusion
Based on how you use your Google +, if you need to backup your contents you must do it before the timeline. For some features of Google +, you may have to take the backup before the estimated date ( April 2, 2019) as per the Google decision.
