Google+ will finally throw in the towel on April 2, the company just announced. Last October, Google said it will shut down the social network for consumers following a security flaw that exposed users' data.
After that, Google+ suffered another data leak, which prompted Google to schedule its demise earlier than it originally planned. That demise now has definite dates.
Google+ Shutdown Timeline
On Feb. 4, users will no longer be able to create new Google+ profiles, pages, communities, and events.
Also on that date, Google will start removing comments generated by Google+ on external websites. Comments on Blogger will be the first to go. Then, on March 7, Google will remove comments from other sites as well. All comments from Google+ accounts made on all websites will disappear on April 2.
On that same day, Google will delete everything. Yes, basically all Google+ content generated thus far, including photos and videos from in album archives and pages.
How To Download Google+ Data
If for some reason this Google+ data is too precious to let go, there's thankfully an easy way to get them before Google eventually wipes everything away. Here's how:
First, the user must sign into their Google account. After doing so, they should then go to a section called "Takeout." This is where Google stores all the services which have data the user can download as an archive.
There will be a lot on items listed on Takeout, including data from Blogger, Chrome, and even their Bookmarks. As such, it's best if the user hits the "Select None" toggle first and foremost. From there, they can then toggle only the ones they want to include in the archive.
What You Should Download
Since this tutorial only concerns Google+ data, there are only a handful of services on the Takeout list that should be toggled. These are Google+ +1s on websites, Google+ Circles, Google+ Communities, Google+ Stream, and the user's Google+ profile.
Once that's done, the user must then decide whether they want to download their archive as a ZIP or TGZ format. The user can also choose the maximum size of their archive. If, for example, the archive is too large, Google can split it into pieces.
Finally, the user must select where they want to download their archive. They can download it directly to their computer or have it uploaded to one of several cloud storage services, such as Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, or Box.
Hit the "Create Archive" button and it's done.
For more detailed step-by-step instructions, visit Google's official support page.
