Google+, the social networking arm launched by Google in 2011, hasn’t thrived like the search giant would have hoped. The company now seems to be accelerating the breakup of Google+, as it has today revealed plans to abandon the necessity of this social layer for many popular Google services.
In a fresh post on Google’s official blog, the company’s Vice President of Streams, Photos, and Sharing, Bradley Horowitz, noted that many aspects of Google+ Photos are now instead in Google’s recently-unveiled Photos app, while location sharing will be shifted from Google+ to a number of apps.
He added that, “in the coming months, a Google Account will be all you’ll need to share content, communicate with contacts, create a YouTube channel and more, all across Google.” Crucially, a Google Account enables greater privacy than a public Google+ profile, as it is not followable or searchable.
Though Horowitz says that new features are still being added to Google+, this social network is being stripped of much of its previous significance. TechCrunch‘s Frederic Lardinois has remarked that “it’s hard not to look at today’s news and think that the company is indeed slowly giving up on the service.”
