+ has been officially demoted. Today, announced that an account on its flailing social network is no longer required to log in to any of ’s connected services. Over the next few months, “a Account will be all you’ll need” to do things like post YouTube videos upload pictures to otos. Not a + account, just a Account.

at’s more, comments posted on YouTube will only appear there, comments posted on + videos will only appear on +. th this, is finally addressing one of the biggest complaints generated by its previous push to make + the center of all things.

+ will still exist, though it’ll mostly serve as an open forum of sorts where people can “engage around their shared interests,” whatever that means. The company said it will also continue to add new features to + to keep in line with that focus.

The story behind the story: finally took notice of the usage patterns of +. “ople have told us that accessing all of their stuff with one account makes life a whole lot easier,” wrote ’s ley Horowitz, Vof Streams, otos, Sharing. “But we’ve also heard that it doesn’t make sense for your + profile to be your identity in all the other products you use.”

Horowitz is right: it doesn’t make sense for your public + profile to also be your identity everywhere else—especially if you don’t plan to use + at all. ’s been splitting services like otos Hangouts into their own stalone features for a while now, thankfully it’s done the same for its social network.

A long time coming

I remember when + launched. I was intrigued by it. I uploaded a ton of photos to my new profile. I even tried using it to blog for a while. I’d hoped + would be the answer to Facebook’s ever-changing lscape; that it’d be a refuge from all the suburban rants outdated memes clogging up my other social networking feeds. But after about two months, I just stopped using it altogether.

It’s been about four years I still have no idea what purpose my + profile serves. I use it to log in to services like TripIt post Stories once in a while, but otherwise, I continue to do all of my social networking elsewhere. Even with all the communities I’ve joined, it still feels like a barren wastel.

I’m glad has finally spoken up about what it’s planning to do with +. ’ve been waiting to hear about it since Vic Gondotra left last year. It was like was fighting the inevitable fate of +; that it didn’t want to distill it down to “just another social network.”

It’s probably a good thing for users that finally gave in, though. For me, + is a place for Android developers big time executives to wax poetic about the future of the industry. It’s a place to share that link you would rather share to Facebook, but you’re too afraid because of the ideological differences between you the people in your “real life. (paradiseweddingchapel.com) ” For me, it’s okay that this is what + has become, because I needed something like that for my online life. And now that ’s embraced it, is cutting out all the other stuff, I feel like I can finally say, “I know why + exists.”