Google is planning to shut down once the popular and precursor to Google+,  the Orkut social network on September 30th of 2014.

It has been 10 years since the inception of the Orkut social network by Google with its first attempt into the social space. Since then, new products like YouTube, Google+ and Blogger arrived with similar and innovative new features. With amazing success of these new products Orkut was not getting much attention in terms of development and among users. Finally the time has come and Google has decided to shutdown the service as of 30th Sept 2014.

So if  were an active user of Orkut and want to retrieve your data, you may do so via Google Takeout until September 2016 i.e. up to 2 years after shutdown. After all it is your data which you may safely retrieve through takeout until it is permanently deleted on or after 30th Sept 2016.

Official Orkut farewell email from Google

After ten years of sparking conversations and forging connections, we have decided it’s time for us to start saying goodbye to Orkut. 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 focus our energy and resources on making these other social platforms as amazing as possible for everyone who uses them.

We will shut down Orkut on September 30, 2014. Until then, there will be no impact on you, so you may have time to manage the transition. You can export your profile data, community posts and photos using Google Takeout (available until September 2016). 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. Please visit our Help Center for any further details.

It’s been a great 10 years, and we apologize to those of you still actively using the service. We hope you will find other online communities to spark more conversations and build even more connections for the next decade and beyond.

More details about the shutdown can be read on this official blog post here.

If you care about your data on Orkut, please don’t forget to back it up before it is permanently deleted.

What do you think of this Orkut Shutdown? Share your thoughts through comments below.