New Gmail users will no longer have to sign up to Google's flagging social network Google+, after two and half years of mandatory social account creation. Users previously had to sign up to Google+ when signing up for Gmail, Google Docs and variety of other Google products.
Whilst the company still encourages users to sign up for Google+ it now has a "No thanks" button when offering the service during the sign up procedure for its products.
Above the "No Thanks" button, the text reads: "Help make Google better for everyone by contributing restaurant reviews, videos on YouTube and rating for apps, books and movies in Play Store. To share public content like this, you'll need a public Google+ profile".
By removing the compulsory aspect of signing up to Google+, it should help the company distance itself from previous blunders, including the unpopular integration of YouTube comments with Google+.
The move to no longer make Google+ compulsory, could also signal that the company are finally starting to admit that their social network to rival Facebook, has failed to gather the momentum to compete with its biggest competitor. Some media outlets announced the death of Google's social network earlier this year when Vic Gundotra, the brains behind Google+ left the company.
It was rumored that Google were so obsessed with making Google+ work that Larry Page, Google's CEO, had tied every employee's bonus with the success of its then new social network.
Like Twitter and Digg, Google+ has also suffered from the selling of 'likes,' which some businesses used to bolster their online presence.
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