Does the Google + consumer shut down affect my business?
So, the consumer shut down of google + has started… a month ago. Did anyone notice? Yeah me neither. Still there will presumably be some consequences for businesses eventually so I thought I’d go and check out those FAQs so you don’t have to.
The long and short of it is that consumer gmail accounts will no longer have an associated Google + account. If you’re a paying or academic G-Suite user of any sort then your gmail account will still have an associated Google + account. So far so simple.
There’s not much more to be said about consumer accounts, but for G-Suite accounts, the details are a little more complicated. For example, if you have upgraded your original consumer account to a paying account then any data added to Google + prior to the upgrade may still be deleted. If your business had a Google + Page, that will also be deleted. Circles are being phased out and after April 2nd you can’t create new circles, Add people without a google + account to existing circles or share a post to a circle. Collections are also being phased out and you won’t be able to create new collections, or add content to a collection that is not domain-restricted. There’s a number of other changes but the above looked like the ones that would affect business users the most. Personally I never used any of these features, but that’s kind of the point/problem isn’t it. You can find the rest of the details here https://support.google.com/a/answer/9229693
If these changes do affect you, then the only recourse is to back up the files through takeout.google.com or backing up your Google + Photos to Google Photos. Given the deletion started a month ago, it may already be too late, but they do say that the deletion process was expected to take several months so it might also still be there. In any case here’s the main FAQ for the shut down https://support.google.com/plus/answer/9217723#whatshappening