Google is planning to shut down its Currents platform in 2023, migrating users to Spaces.
Google Currents was launched in 2019 as a replacement for the tech giant’s social networking platform Google+ for G Suite. The tech giant introduced Spaces — a revamped version of ‘Rooms’ — in Google Chat last year. As Google describes it, Spaces is “a dedicated place for organising people, topics, and projects in Google Workspace.”
It is now planning to shut down Currents and bring users over to Spaces in 2023.
“With Spaces now available, starting in 2023 we are planning to wind down Google Currents and bring remaining content and communities over to the new Spaces experience,” Google said in a blog post.
“Upgrading Google Currents to Spaces removes a separate, siloed destination for users, and provides organisations with a modern, enterprise-grade experience that reflects how the world is working today. Spaces provide a central place for teams to engage in topic-based discussions, share knowledge and ideas, move projects forward, and build communities and team culture,” it explained.
New features
Google will further deliver new capabilities in Spaces for effective collaboration. These include support for larger communities and leadership communication, investments in advanced search, tools for content moderation, etc.
“We’re also investing in search and discoverability, platform capabilities for app development, and enterprise-grade security and compliance, including data protection, data loss prevention (DLP) and Vault support,” it said.
Spaces are available to all Google Workspace customers.
Phased shift
While it plans to wind down Currents next year, it will start turning down certain “rarely used” features on the platform starting in Q1 CY22. These include features such as Following and follower count, community insights, profile influence and tags, among others, as per a support document.
It will later ask organisations to opt in to the migration and select communities that they want to migrate.
“In early 2023, we’ll migrate data from your selected communities to Spaces. Users can continue using Currents until early 2023. After the migration is complete, users will be able to continue their conversations from the migrated Currents communities in Spaces,” the blog post said.
Published on
February 14, 2022
