Google+ profile no longer needed for YouTube, other Google platforms

Trisha Thadani | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Google+finally on way out Though it's been declared over more times than we can count, it looks like Google's social network is finally on death's door. The writing has been on the wall for a while now but Google is finally breaking up with Google+. In a Monday morning pos

Google+ profiles will no longer be the be-all and end-all identity for users across the company's platforms such as YouTube, Google said Monday.

Bradley Horowitz, Google's vice president of streams, photos and sharing, wrote in a blog post Monday that although the company got certain things right with Google+, there were a few choices that, "in hindsight, we've needed to rethink."

Google+ launched in June 2011 as a social network to give users a single identity across all Google platforms, and offer some competition to rival Facebook. But some users did not react well to the forced integration with Google+.

"People have told us that accessing all of their Google stuff with one account makes life a whole lot easier," Horowitz said, "but we've also heard that it doesn't make sense for your Google+ profile to be your identity in all the other Google products you use."

In a bid to make a "more focused, more useful, more engaging" Google+, Horowitz said, over the next few months the company will unravel certain Google+ features and only require a Google account for access. Unlike the public Google+ profiles, Google accounts are not searchable or followable, he said.

With these changes, people who don't use Google+ will not need a public profile to use other Google products.

The first platform to make the break will be YouTube, which previously required users to have a Google+ account to comment, share, or upload videos on the site. Starting today, users will only need a Google account to engage on YouTube. Comments made on YouTube will not appear on Google+, and vise versa.

Google announced last week that it's shutting down Google+ Photos by Aug. 1 to make room for a stand-alone Google Photos app. Horowitz also said that they're underway putting location sharing into Hangouts and other apps,"

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