Google Currents (social app)

This article is about the enterprise communication tool. For the defunct magazine app, see Google Currents (news app).

Google Currents was a software application developed by Google for internal enterprise communication.^[1][2] It is one of many products that constitute the Google Workspace line of products.^[3]

Google Currents
Other names	Google+ for G Suite
Developer(s)	Google
Initial release	28 June 2011
Platform	Android, iOS, Web app
Successor	Spaces in Google Chat
License	Proprietary
Website	Google Currents' Introduction & Features at the Wayback Machine (archived 2022-01-04)

Google Currents was different from the also defunct Google app of the same name, which provided users with access to an electronic library of magazines from 2011 to 2013.^[4][5] It was replaced by the Spaces feature in Google Chat in March 2023. Google announced shutting down for business and education on July 5, 2023.^[6]

History and development

Originally called Google+ for G Suite, Currents was, up until its closure in 2023, the sole remnant of Google's defunct social network Google+, which counted more than 375 million active members in 2016 but struggled to compete with the largest social network Facebook.^[7] A user profile in the platform was a publicly visible account and included fundamental characteristics of social networking services.^[8] Currents provided functionality that supported interdisciplinary collaborative experience alongside other G-Suite software and tools.^[9] Communities within the platform can be used for posting discussions and topics while users can follow communities, topics, or other users to keep up with published content.^[10] It was shut down entirely for personal and brand use on April 2, 2019.^[11][12] It also offered as the successor for Google internal company communication.^[7]

In June 2020, Google Currents was in Public Beta for Google Workspace clients. A free trial could also be requested.^[13][14][15]

On February 10, 2022, Google announced that it would be planning to "wind down" Google Currents and transition its users to the Spaces feature in Google Chat the next year.^[16]

See also

• Google Wave
• Google Buzz
• Google+, the defunct and formerly related social network
• Google Currents (2011–2013), the unrelated discontinued news app
• Yammer, an analogous private social network for Microsoft 365 customers
• LinkedIn, business social media platform.