Google will shut down Currents, the work-focused Google Plus replacement

Update April 12th, 2023, 5PM ET: Google announced it will begin winding down Currents on July 5th, with data available for export until August 8th, 2023, when it will no longer be available.

Google has announced that it’ll shut down Currents, which was introduced in 2019 as a replacement for Google Plus for G Suite. In a blog post, the company says it’s “planning to wind down” Currents, and that it’ll push the people who were using it to Spaces, which is sort of like Google Chat’s version of a Slack channel or Discord room.

Google says that it’s making the change so users won’t have to work in a “separate, siloed destination” — instead, they’ll be using Chat and Spaces, which will soon be prominently integrated into Gmail. The company promises it’s going to make Spaces a more suitable replacement over the next year, saying it’ll “deliver new capabilities” like “support for larger communities and leadership communication, investments in advanced search, tools for content moderation, and more.”

While Google says its plan is to start winding down Currents in 2023, “rarely used” features will fade out starting in Q1 2022 (which we’re currently in). It lists the features that will be removed or degraded in a support document, and promises to keep Workspace administrators updated about future changes and the migration timeline.

It’s also, by the way, the second time Google has shut down its product named Currents — before the current (ha) iteration, it was a magazine app. It’s a real double-whammy, even for a company that has a reputation for dumping projects.