Google officially pulls the cord on Google+

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Whelp, the day is finally upon us to say goodbye to Google+, the unused, unloved, unsocial social network from Google’s foray into the space. While you’ve not been able to create new accounts since February, today marks the start of Google actually deleting data.

While you might not care about your account, you might care about some of the content you uploaded (assuming you actually did upload anything). It might not be too late, so check out our guide to doing just that. If your photos from that one time you actually used Google+ when it started are gone, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re out of luck. This is the internet, and everything posted online has a way of resurfacing.

In Google+’s case, that will be mostly down to the Internet Archive and the ArchiveTeam. They’ve been beavering away at saving every possible byte of Google+’s public posts, so if you’re missing anything important, that should be your first port of call.

The decision to close Google+ likely would have happened anyways, but it was sparked by a massive data breach last October, and hastened by an even bigger breach in December. The social site had been floundering from the get-go. I can remember being invited to join by a lucky techie friend and having such high hopes for the platform. Those hopes were quickly dashed, as Google+ devolved into a weird hybrid of Facebook’s News Feed, Pinterest’s cluttered UI, and none of the useful parts of either.

Pour one out for Google+, the 155th product killed off by the unfeeling dystopian overlord of Google. “Do no evil”, my ass.

What do you think? Glad to see Google+ go? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience at KnowTechie, SlashGear and XDA Developers. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere, with particular focus in gadgetry and handheld gaming. Shoot him an email at joe@knowtechie.com.