That’s the end, finished, kaput. GooglePlus has finally closed for good.

Originally Google+ was touted to become an all encompassing social network which would shake Facebook and become its serious competitor.

Instead it never got the wings to really take off and the death knell came by way of the enormous data scandals of recent days which not only hit Facebook and cost them billions in fines, but as we now learn, Google has not been free of data leakage and they assess that half a million users’ private details have leaked into unauthorized hands.

According to the Wall Street Journal Google has known about this since March but has kept quiet about it. An internal memo which the paper has obtained shows that Google feared the political consequences of a disclosure. The company said that the problem wasn’t big enough to publicise, and that the data which was leaked wasn’t serious enough  to make the breach public.

Last Monday Google nevertheless closed the whole GooglePlus setup.