Google+ is dead again, maybe for good this time

Google+ shuffled off this mortal coil to the great app graveyard back in 2019 — right? Well, not quite. As a reminder, its corpse was reanimated as Google Currents, designed strictly for paying G Suite customers. Now, Google Workspaces announced that it has killed that app off too, marking the final end of Google's social network or whatever G+ was, Ars Technica reported. 

Google said that the introduction of the Spaces group chat app last year negated the need for Currents, so it plans to wind it down starting in 2023. Before it does that, however, it will add new capabilities to Spaces to accommodate some of Currents' social features. "These include support for larger communities and leadership communication, investments in advanced search, tools for content moderation, and more," Google said. 

As was the case with Google+, the usage and purpose of Currents was likely unclear to many users. That issue extends to Spaces, as well, unfortunately. As Google described it last year, Spaces is an evolution of Rooms but is a part of Google Chat that's designed for group messaging, much like Slack. Got it?

What's also kind of funny is that Google recycled both the Spaces and Currents names: Currents was a news-style app that existed until 2013, and Google Spaces was a messaging app we saw for a short time in 2016. So one might say that Google+ was effectively killed twice, and Currents was also buried two times. Now, let's hope we never hear those names again.