Google to pull plug on Orkut today

Google is pulling the plug on Orkut today, a social-networking website that was once a rage among youngsters in India and Brazil. Users would not be able to access their Orkut profile from tomorrow.

On 30 June, in a blog post titled, 'Tchau Orkut', the social network had announced shutting down the service and had said web users would no longer be able to create Orkut accounts though the website would remain accessible until 30 September.

According to Google, the user data would be available to Orkut members until 2016. Users would be able to use Google's 'Takeout' tool to export their profile data, posts and photos.

Some of the data created as part of Orkut public communities too would be available.

In an announcement, Google had said, "Orkut, the service, may be going away, but all of those incredible communities Orkut users have created will live on. We are preserving an archive of all public communities, which will be available online starting September 30, 2014. If you don't want your posts or name to be included in the community archive, you can remove Orkut permanently from your Google account."

Orkut, which started in 2004, was one of the most popular social networking websites between 2006 and 2009 and was top social networking website in 2008 in India and Brazil.  However with Facebook gaining popularity, the majority of Orkut members stopped using it.

In a blog post, Google said, ''Over the past decade, YouTube, Blogger and Google+ have taken off, with communities springing up in every corner of the world. Because the growth of these communities has outpaced Orkut`s growth, we've decided to bid Orkut farewell''.

Google, Google+ social network launched in 2011 and has been expanding across other services. While Google+ had been initially positioned to take on Facebook, the last few years, had seen it establish Google+ as a unified "user identity" system.

Orkut fell behind Facebook in 2010 as the top social networking site in India with 20.9 million visitors in July that year as against Orkut`s 16 per cent growth with 19.9 million visitors, according to research firm comScore.

According to Google, it would preserve an archive of all Orkut communities that would be available from 30 September.