Google will start disabling Google+ next week

Google will begin disabling Google+ from February 4. It is then no longer possible to create accounts. From April 2, Google will start removing content from the flopped social network. That will take several months.

Google has released a timeline detailing the shutdown of Google+ after it announced last year that it would be pulling the plug on the social network in April. It now appears that Google will start disabling functionality as early as February 4. From then on it will no longer be possible to create new profiles, pages, communities or events on Google+.

The use of Google+ for comments on Blogger websites will also be disabled on February 4. By March 7, the same will happen for other websites that use Google+ responses. Existing comments will be deleted from April 2.

On April 2, Google will disable all Google+ accounts and the search giant will begin removing content from the consumer version of the social network. Until then, users can download their own photos and videos with a tool. Deleting content will take several months, Google says.

Admins and moderators of communities on Google+ can also download their data. More data will be made available to those users in early March, allowing them to download full public posts from community members.

In October, Google announced it would discontinue the consumer version of Google+ after a serious privacy bug came to light. Google had kept that vulnerability under wraps for months. Initially, the plan was to disable Google+ in August 2019, but that was accelerated after another vulnerability was discovered. The business version of Google+ will continue to exist.