tech2 News Staff

Google has announced a few changes to its platform, Google+. Previously, many products such as YouTube required Google+ profiles but things have now changed. The company has announced that it no longer requires Google+ accounts to use any of its products and it will continue to strip Google+ integration out of all of its products. The company believes that a Google+ profile does not make sense to be a user's identity in other Google products.

"People have told us that accessing all of their Google stuff with one account makes life a whole lot easier," Bradley Horowitz, Google's vice president of photos and sharing, wrote in a company blog post. The first service that will be decoupled from Google+ is YouTube. Users who have linked their Google+ accounts to YouTube will also be able to remove their Google+ profiles from the service in a few months.

Horowitz also announced that the company will continue to move some features out of Google+. According to him, Google+ will continue becoming a place where people engage around their shared interests, with the content and people who inspire them. That means Google will focus on features like Google+ Collections and move location-sharing to tools like Hangouts. "We think changes like these will lead to a more focused, more useful, more engaging Google+," he added.

It was recently announced that Google+ Photos is shutting down on 1 August, making way for the standalone Google Photos app that was introduced in May. The Android version of Google+ Photos will be pulled down starting 1 August, followed by the web and iOS versions. So for those users still using Google+ Photos, it’s time to make the switch.

Users will begin to see a prompt in Google+ Photos on Android asking them to download the new Photos app. Once you make the switch, all photos and videos will be saved in the new app.