Google's social network didn't take off in the same way as its previous social service, Wave. Of course, the reasons for its failure are somewhat different, but the fact remains that Google+ is shutting down. While this platform had significantly fewer users than Facebook, it still held valuable information.
Understanding this, the Internet Archive team decided to preserve the public records of the social network before the service is shut down. Representatives of the Archive stated this on .
Records that have already been deleted or made private will not be archived. The Internet Archive urged users who do not want their records to become public to delete their accounts — in such cases, the content will not be archived.
Additionally, there are limitations in the archiving system for public posts. Specifically, no more than 500 comments will be saved, and they will be presented as HTML pages. It is still unclear whether representatives of the Internet Archive will be able to save a greater number of comments. Moreover, images and videos will not be saved in full resolution — they will be reduced in quality to save space.
Previously, Google announced that it was shutting down the social network for two reasons. The first is , which allowed third-party developers to access users' data from 2015 to 2018 (the company didn't catch on until three years later). Moreover, after fixing the vulnerability, the company decided not to make the issue public.
The problem is that if a user granted any application access to their data, the vulnerability allowed third-party developers to obtain private information both from that user's profile and from their friends' profiles. The scale of the problem is relatively small — 500,000 accounts were affected.
At the same time, Google stated that it is unknown whether anyone actually used the data. However, it was possible to scrape users' full names, emails, birth dates, profile pictures, occupations, etc.
The second issue is the lack of active use of the service. Simply put, it was unpopular despite all the company's efforts to improve the situation.
Strictly speaking, Google Plus will not be completely shut down. However, it will be modified to become a service for corporate clients. The company plans to add more features specifically needed by businesses, which will be discussed in more detail later.
Source: habr.com
