Google+ for Business coming “later this year,” shutting down non-user profiles

Google says it is planning to introduce Google+ for businesses before the year is out, allowing brands to create profiles on the site without using workarounds.

The company has asked businesses to hold off on creating consumer profiles for now, and will start doing tests with “non-user entities” soon, which will be available for any entity that is not an individual.

“It can be a team, an organization, a business, a brand, an NGO, a university, etc,” said Christian Oestlien, who made the announcement in the video below.

You can put your name down for these tests here, but Google has indicated the number of businesses involved will be very limited.

In the meantime, Google’s policy team will be shutting down the profiles of these non-user entities until the official feature becomes available. Unfortunately, this means The Next Web’s profile will soon disappear after amassing nearly 5,000 readers.

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“They’ll be shut down whether they submit the form or not, assuming they’re not part of the experiment,” said Google’s Jim Prosser regarding existing businesses using consumer profiles.

“Some of the existing profiles might be included in our testing,” said Oestlien. “We’ll be reviewing everything on a case by case basis once we have a sense for user interest.”