Google has announced it will shut down its ailing Google+ social network, following reports in the Wall Street Journal that the tech giant failed to inform hundreds of thousands of users of a potential data security breach in March this year.
The Journal says that Google opted not to go public with the news that it had inadvertently allowed app developers to access profile data from users that had not been marked as public “in part because of fears that doing so would draw regulatory scrutiny and cause reputational damage”.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
The Pentagon faces an uncertain future with TrumpTalking Point The president-elect has nominated conservative commentator Pete Hegseth to lead the Defense Department
-
This is what you should know about State Department travel advisories and warningsIn Depth Stay safe on your international adventures
-
'All Tyson-Paul promised was spectacle and, in the end, that's all we got'Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Google Maps gets an AI upgrade to compete with AppleUnder the Radar The Google-owned Waze, a navigation app, will be getting similar upgrades
-
Is ChatGPT's new search engine OpenAI's Google 'killer'?Talking Point There's a new AI-backed search engine in town. But can it stand up to Google's decades-long hold on internet searches?
-
'Stunningly lifelike' AI podcasts are hereUnder the Radar Users are amazed – and creators unnerved – by Google tool that generates human conversation from text in moments
-
Will the Google antitrust ruling shake up the internet?Today's Big Question And what does that mean for users?
-
Wall Street tumbles on poor tech resultsSpeed Read US markets had their worst day since 2022 as Tesla and AI stocks dropped
-
Why is the tech industry up in arms about Google's search algorithm leak?Today's Big Question A leak of about 2,500 documents shed light on how Google's search engine operates, and not everyone is happy
-
How AI is going to change the Google search experienceTalking Points Summaries are the new links
-
Google unveils 'AI overviews' atop search resultsSpeed Read Users of the search engine in the US will now get AI-generated answers first
