Google is shutting down its long-shunned Plus social network for consumers following its disclosure of a flaw discovered in March that could have exposed some personal information of up to 500,000 people.
The announcement came in a Monday blog post that marked Google's first public description of the privacy bug.
Google deliberately avoided disclosing the problem at the time, in part to avoid drawing regulatory scrutiny and damaging its reputation, according to a Wall Street Journal story that cited anonymous individuals and documents.
The US company declined to comment on the Journal's report and did not fully explain in its blog post why it held off on revealing the bug until Monday.
The Google Plus flaw could have allowed up to 438 external apps to scoop up user names, email addresses, occupations, genders and ages without authorisation.
The company did not find any evidence that any of the personal information affected by the Plus breach was misused.
The timeline laid out by Google indicates the company discovered the privacy lapse about the same time Facebook was under fire for a leak in its far more popular social network.
Facebooks' breakdown exposed the personal information of as many as 87 million of its users to Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining firm affiliated with President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign.
Launched in 2011, Google Plus was supposed to be a challenger to Facebook, which now has more than two billion users.
However, Plus flopped and quickly turned into a digital ghost town, prompting Google to start de-emphasizing it several years ago.
