Google+ rebranded as Currents for business users

Google has finally closed its social media attempt, Google+, for good as the company rebrands the platform for exclusively enterprise use.

Now called Google Currents, the platform will be openly available for all users from 6 July. In April 2019, when Google+ was shuttered, the company said that the new tool would allow “people to have meaningful discussions and interactions across your organisation, helping keep everyone in the know and giving leaders the opportunity to connect with their employees.”

It appears that Currents, which has been in beta testing for several months, will work akin to Facebook Workplace, a spin-off of the company’s social network for enterprise users.

In an email sent to G Suite administrators, as reported by The Register, Google said: “After Currents becomes generally available on July 6, 2020, your users and all of your organization’s existing Google+ content will be automatically transitioned to Currents. It may take up to 5 days for Currents to rollout to your organization.”

“There will not be any downtime for users during this transition. Additionally, the new Currents mobile app will replace the Google+ iOS and Android mobile apps, which will no longer be supported. After July 6, 2020, it will not be possible to opt out of Currents or revert back to Google+.”

Existing plus.google.com links will continue to work, but will redirect to currents.google.com URLs. The Google+ app, on iOS and Android, is expected to be updated with the Currents branding.

As Google reaches further into the workplace collaboration space, Microsoft is doing the same with online documents.

At its Build conference – streamed online due to the coronavirus pandemic – the company announced its Fluid Framework which would make document collaboration easier with live, constantly updatable graphs and spreadsheets that will eventually be rolled out to Office 365.

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