An executive from Google announced that over the next few months, the company will no longer require users to have a Google+ account to access its online services.
According to Bradley Horowitz, Google's vice president of Streams, Photos and Sharing, this move will be first implemented on the popular video streaming site YouTube.
Google officially launched Google+ in 2011. As a social networking site, it provided users a way to access all of Google's online services using a single public profile, USA Today reported.
Then, two years later, the company required YouTube users to have a Google+ account in order to interact with the site. Under this rule, those who did not have an account were not allowed to share, upload and comment on the videos.
For Google, this served as a way to provide people to connect with others while using its various platforms. However, in a recent post on the Google Blog, the company admitted that requiring users to have one public account to access numerous sites may not have been such a good idea.
"When we launched Google+, we set out to help people discover, share and connect across Google like they do in real life," Horowitz wrote on the blog. "While we got certain things right, we made a few choices that, in hindsight, we've needed to rethink."
"So over the next few months, we're going to be making some important changes," the executive continued.
Although some people felt that it was easier to access their various Google accounts using Google+ according to Horowitz, some found it a bit impractical.
To rectify this, instead of a Google+ public profile, users will only need to have a Google account to access the company's sites. Unlike the former, the executive explained that Google account owners cannot be searched or followed by other people.
Aside from changes concerning YouTube, the company announced that it has also incorporated Google+ Photos, which used to be a separate platform, into the new Google Photos app, CNET reported. Also, Google plans to overhaul its Hangouts messaging service by including location sharing features.
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