The change, which will likely be a help for many, is rolling out now to all users, so if you don’t have a Google+ account and can’t write reviews on Google Play, you should be able to in the near future.
Of course, the move is just another directed toward unbundling services and features from Google+. Perhaps the most notable is when Google unbundled the much loved Google+ Photos to a new service, simply called Google Photos, which has fast become one of Google’s most loved services. Google also disconnected Google+ from YouTube comments, allowing users to comment on YouTube without needing to have a Google+ profile at all.
“People have told us that accessing all of their Google stuff with one account makes life a whole lot easier,” said Google Vice President of Streams, Photos and Sharing Bradley Horowitz, in a blog post. “But we’ve also heard that it doesn’t make sense for your Google+ profile to be your identity in all the other Google products you use.”
Google+ was first launched in 2011, and while it had some great features, it largely failed to capture the same audience the likes of Facebook have managed. It still has a small yet loyal user-base, however Google clearly wants to bring as many features as possible to the masses, which is why the company is bringing things like Google Photos and the ability to make reviews to those simply with Google accounts, rather than needing users to have Google+ accounts. The failed social media network has even been called the “walking dead” by Vic Gundotra, who left Google after heading up the Google+ project.
