Google will shut down Currents, the work-focused Google Plus replacement

Google has introduced that it’ll shut down Currents, which was launched in 2019 as a substitute for Google Plus for G Suite. In a weblog publish, the corporate says it’s “planning to wind down” Currents, and that it’ll push the individuals who have been utilizing it to Areas, which is type of like Google Chat’s model of a Slack channel or Discord room.

Google says that it’s making the change so customers received’t should work in a “separate, siloed vacation spot” — as a substitute, they’ll be utilizing Chat and Areas, which is able to quickly be prominently built-in into Gmail. The corporate guarantees it’s going to make Areas a extra appropriate substitute over the following 12 months, saying it’ll “ship new capabilities” like “help for bigger communities and management communication, investments in superior search, instruments for content material moderation, and extra.”

Whereas Google says its plan is to begin winding down Currents in 2023, “not often used” options will fade out beginning in Q1 2022 (which we’re at present in). It lists the options that can be eliminated or degraded in a help doc, and guarantees to maintain Workspace directors up to date about future modifications and the migration timeline.

Currents hasn’t gotten loads of love from Google. I used to be solely capable of finding three weblog posts about it on Google’s Workspace Updates website — the one saying it, one in 2020 saying that it was extensively out there, and the one from Thursday saying it was being shut down. It was included on Google’s principal record of apps that include Workspace at one level in keeping with the WayBack Machine, but it surely looks as if it was eliminated someday in November 2021.

There’s nonetheless a hyperlink to a Currents web page within the footer on the Google Workspace web page, however clicking on it takes you to the web page for Google Chat. That appears like an insult to harm, however as Ars Technica factors out the final word insult is that that is mainly the second time Google has shut down Google Plus. Because the KilledByGoogle Twitter account vividly explained in 2020, Currents was created when Google shut down its failed social community for public use (after a serious privateness flaw was found), however sort of wanted to maintain it round for enterprise customers. Now Currents finds itself not lengthy for this world and is being changed by what looks as if one in every of Google’s new favourite tasks, Chats.

It’s additionally, by the best way, the second time Google has shut down its product named Currents — earlier than the present (ha) iteration, it was {a magazine} app. It’s an actual double-whammy, even for an organization that has a repute for dumping tasks.