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

Google has introduced that it’ll shut down Currents, which was launched in 2019 as a alternative for Google Plus for G Suite. In a weblog put up, 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 kind 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 must work in a “separate, siloed vacation spot” — as a substitute, they’ll be utilizing Chat and Areas, which can quickly be prominently built-in into Gmail. The corporate guarantees it’s going to make Areas a extra appropriate alternative over the subsequent yr, saying it’ll “ship new capabilities” like “assist for bigger communities and management communication, investments in superior search, instruments for content material moderation, and extra.”

Google’s going to start out turning off not often used options in Currents quickly

Whereas Google says its plan is to start out 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 assist doc, and guarantees to maintain Workspace directors up to date about future adjustments and the migration timeline.

Currents hasn’t gotten lots 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 broadly obtainable, and the one from Thursday saying it was being shut down. It was included on Google’s important listing of apps that include Workspace at one level in keeping with the WayBack Machine, however it looks like 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 damage, 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 defined in 2020, Currents was created when Google shut down its failed social community for public use (after a serious privateness flaw was found), however type 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 like considered one of Google’s new favourite tasks, Chats.

It’s additionally, by the way in which, 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 status for dumping tasks.