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Here’s Google’s latest plan to make Google+ matter

Published Jul 1st, 2014 10:25AM EDT
Google Shuts Down Orkut

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After ten years, Google’s first attempt at creating a social network is finally coming to an end. Google announced on Monday that Orkut would be officially shut down on September 30th, 2014 to make room for the thriving social communities on YouTube, Blogger and Google+, all of which have handily outpaced Orkut’s growth over the past decade.

With Orkut out of the way, Google will only have one true social network to manage. Whether or not this will be beneficial to Google+ remains to be seen, but when every additional shoehorned integration of your social network causes a massive uproar, there’s nowhere to go but up.

If you have an Orkut account, you’ll still be able to log in, interact with your friends and play games until September 30th. You can also export any photo albums you’d like to keep to your Google+ profile, and your entire profile can be downloaded using Google Takeout until September 2016.

If you want to delete any individual posts, you’ll need to hop on to Orkut before Google archives your profile in September, but you can also simply remove Orkut from your Google profile any time before or after the shut down in order to delete all your posts.

For more information on death of Orkut, check out the farewell blog post as well as Google’s extensive FAQ.

Jacob Siegal
Jacob Siegal Associate Editor

Jacob Siegal is Associate Editor at BGR, having joined the news team in 2013. He has over a decade of professional writing and editing experience, and helps to lead our technology and entertainment product launch and movie release coverage.