Google has decided to shut down Orkut

Google has recently announced that it plans to close Orkut, which was its first attempt at constructing a social network. This social network will be formally shut down on 30th September 2014, and after that users will no longer be able to log in, view their profiles or export their picture albums to Google+. It has been reported that Orkut grew out almost Google’s 20% initiative which gave employees the permission to use a substantial amount of their time from the working week on other side projects. Indeed, the social network has since been displaced by Google+ which is a more determined service tying into many other products of Google. Therefore the decision to close Orkut is hardly shocking however the fact it took so long for Google to make this decision is probably more of a shock.

From now on, it is going to be impossible for novices to create a new account on Orkut. Whereas the previous and existing users can continue to use this service as normal. According to Google this three month period will give the public some time to manage this transition. Orkut fans have been provided the facility to export their profile data, personal info, posts and photos by using Google Takeout.

It has almost been a decade since Orkut has been around and to mark its bequest, Google has decided to preserve all of the public communities of the site in an archive. The famous Orkut app has also been removed from the App store and Google Play. According to Google it will be targeting its efforts on Blogger, Google+ and YouTube from now on. CEO Larry Page however said in a conference that the latter is still growing tremendously. Orkut was a forte social networking site which was targeted mainly on the Indian and Brazilian markets. Ever since Google Plus has been hurled it has competed hard against the mega social networking site such as Facebook and Orkut in Brazil and India respectively and managed to gain considerable market share in these countries. Now transferring Orkut users to Google Plus is going to be a key milestone in the battle of Google against Facebook.

Orkut was the name of the Google employee after whom the site was given name. He intended to connect people around the globe through a website where they could interrelate with each other. According to a survey, Orkut was launched with an exceptional timing, only a few months after Myspace and surprisingly only a few months before Twitter and Facebook took over the social networking market. Orkut never managed to become a foremost player in the social networking market, it was always considered as a position holding site that was popular in evolving markets.

When Facebook was launched and it started to take over the social networking market then Google thought hard and finally decided to fight back with the help of two strategic decisions. Transferring Orkut's operations to Brazil being the first and the introduction of Google Friend Connect the second. Google tried hard to use its modest advantage in India and Brazil to increase focus on these markets. Orkut's possession to Google Brazil was successful for a certain time until Facebook took over the Brazilian Market in 2012 and Indian in 2010. However, Facebook defeated Google twice in 2012 and finally Google remained unsuccessful to compete with Fb and proclaimed the withdrawal of Google Friend Connect from the market.