Google will discontinue its business Google+ successor Currents in July

Google will shut down its business social network Currents on July 5. The functionality has been included in its business Spaces service. Administrators can download the data until August 8. Currents was the business successor to Google+.

After August 8 the data is gone, says Google. With Currents, the last trace of Google+, the search giant’s failed social network that was released in 2011, disappears. With Google+, the company wanted to compete with Facebook, among others.

Most of Currents’ functionality is now contained in Spaces, its business service for employee communication. It is unknown how many users Currents has had and how many remain. Google had announced the impending end of Currents in February last year.

Google Currents was unveiled in 2019 at what was then the Google Next event. Currents had a similar interface to Google+ and was aimed at the business market. In Google Currents, just like in Google+, communities could be created in which content could be shared. In Currents, however, posts could be sorted by relevance or reverse chronology. Entries from important figures, such as a director, could be pinned to the top. Google permanently discontinued Google+ for consumers at the end of 2018 after the company discovered a privacy bug. The company then stated that the Google+ APIs were “difficult to develop and maintain.”

Google Currents