Google+ Fold: Google killedCurrents twice in a row

In a blog post on Thursday, Google pronounced the death penalty for Currents, a Google+ alternative for businesses. While Google+ for the average user was shut down in April 2019, Google has also tried to rename it Currents to accommodate the needs of paying G Suite customers.

In contrast to google+ services, google currents posts are only available to members of your organization.

However, with the rapid shrinking user base, the Google Workspace team made a difficult decision, and the Currents service will begin to end in 2023.

Given that Google+ itself is a failed consumer product, we are not surprised by the eclipse of Google Currents.

After all, google has never invested in it since renaming the service for commercial customers.

What puzzled us most, however, was the tech giant's designation of Google Chat as a replacement for Currents.

As one of the company's latest messaging apps, Chat initially targeted Slack and was later expected to succeed Google Hangouts' consumer chat service.

With Google Chat designated as an alternative to Google+, the company will integrate the remaining Currents content and community into the former Spaces experience.

After reading the official blog, ARSTechnica has another question:

Although Spaces belongs to the group chat service of Google Chat, google chat is not explicitly mentioned in the article, and it seems that Spaces is regarded as a standalone product.

Looking back at the announcement of Google Chat last year, Google's statement was:

With the launch of Spaces, we're evolving the chat room experience in Google Chat into a place dedicated to your organization's people, topics, and projects in Google Workspace.

This summer, we'll be upgrading the Room to Spaces and introducing a simplified and flexible user interface (UI) so teams and individuals can take control of everything that matters.

In addition, in the redesigned Gmail mail service experience, Spaces also occupies a prominent position (just below the Chats list).

It is reported that Spaces chat rooms have two modes, one of which is similar to group chat, and the other can make each post the starting point of the conversation thread (similar to the forum).

It's not hard to imagine what it would be like if it could one day be used to save Google+ data.

But before moving G+ data to Google Chat, the company also previewed some upcoming changes:

We'll provide new features in Spaces to help you communicate and collaborate more effectively. These include support for larger communities and leadership communications, complemented by investments in tools such as advanced search and content moderation.

In addition, we focus on search and discoverability, application development platform capabilities, and enterprise-grade security and compliance—including data protection, loss prevention (DLP), and Vault support.