As vulnerabilities go, it was the best sort: found by internal testing before it led to a security breach. Nevertheless, the latest Google+ software vulnerability was enough to push forward shutting down the service: Google now says it will be shuttered by April 2019 rather than the originally planned August 2019.

According to Google, the vulnerability in a Google+ API affecting some 52.5 million users would have allowed applications with permission to view public data to view some private data, as well. In a blog post, the company said that it had no data indicating that any third party had seen unauthorized data but that the problem is leading to all Google+ APIs being “subsetted” within the next 90 days.