Google+ is shutting down on April 2, 2019. Google+ was created in 2011 as the search engine giant’s answer to Facebook. Unfortunately, it never caught on and Google finally announced that the social networking website will be shut down, citing “low usage and challenges involved in maintaining a successful product that meets consumers’ expectations.”
Despite being a relative failure in the social media scene, Google+ managed to attract over 2 billion Internet users. It’s not known how many Google+ users are still active on the platform, but in any case, there will be few mourners for its funeral. Unlike Facebook or even Twitter, Google+ never became a household name.
How to Download Your Google+ Photos and Content
If you have used Google+ in the past, you can actually download and save your Google+ data and content before the scheduled shutdown. Take note that only consumer (personal) Google+ accounts are affected by this closure; enterprise accounts using Gsuite will continue to be available.
Here’s how to download and save your Google+ data:
First, visit this link. Sign in to your Google account if you haven’t done so already. Choose up to four products that you want to include in your archive: Google+ +1s, Google+ Circles, Google+ Communities, and Google+ Stream.
+1s are links, blog posts and other content that you “+1’d” or liked around the web. Circles are your contacts and friends on Google+. Communities are groups that you joined as well as their posts. Stream is content that you created on Google+, such as photos, events, posts and comments.
You have the option to choose a different format to download, such as HTML, JSON or CSV. You can also choose a specific Google+ Stream data to download.
Click the “Next step” button to continue.
Choose your delivery method, whether by email link, Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive or Box.com. Select the file type, either .zip or .tgz. If you’re not sure which one to choose, just leave it as .zip. Afterwards, choose the archive size. Your archive will be split into multiple files if it’s bigger than your chosen archive size. If you think you have a lot of data, it’s advisable to select 50GB.
Click “Create archive.” Just wait for a few minutes (or hours, depending on the size of your data) and your archive will become available for download. You will also receive an email telling you how to download your archive.
That’s it! It’s fairly easy to download and save your Google+ data and content. Just hurry because you only have until April 2 to save your content. Better safe than sorry!
