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You No Longer Need a Google+ Account for YouTube Comments

The long goodbye.

Since the inception of Google+ in 2011, the company has pushed users to join the social network, integrating many of its services and apps with the struggling platform. The company has been slowly scaling back on those efforts in recent months, and announced Monday it would be making many changes, including no longer requiring users to make a Google+ account for YouTube.

In a post on Monday titled "Everything in its right place," the Google VP of streams, photos, and sharing, Bradley Horowitz, said the company is removing restrictions for sharing content.

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"In the coming months, a Google Account will be all you'll need to share content, communicate with contacts, create a YouTube channel and more, all across Google," he wrote.

In addition to only requiring a Google account, the company will integrate elements of Google+ Photos into the Google Photos app, and allow location sharing in the Google hangouts app.

Horowitz elaborated on the decision in a post on his own Google+ page.

"What does this mean for Google+ the product? Relieved of the notion of integrating with every other product at Google, Google+ can now focus on doing what it's already doing quite well: helping millions of users around the world connect around the interest they love," he wrote.

This means you can let your Google+ account slowly die like you've likely been doing already. Horowitz said the company will offer new options for removing profiles. He said the changes will be rolled out over the next few months.

"While they won't happen overnight, they're right for Google's users—both the people who are on Google+ every single day, and the people who aren't," he said.