Tech giant Google is shutting down its social networking site Google Plus after a technical glitch was found to have compromised accounts and personal information of over 500,000 of its users.
The announcement was made by Ben Smith, Google Fellow and vice-president of engineering, in a blog post on Monday
He noted that the company could not confirm which users were impacted by the bug.
“However, we ran a detailed analysis over the two weeks prior to patching the bug, and from that analysis, the Profiles of up to 500,000 Google+ accounts were potentially affected. Our analysis showed that up to 438 applications may have used this API,” Smith said.
He noted that Google Plus will not be shut down immediately. “To give people a full opportunity to transition, we will implement this wind-down over a 10-month period, slated for completion by the end of next August. Over the coming months, we will provide consumers with additional information, including ways they can download and migrate their data,” he wrote.
