Google hack: Why it matters and how to delete your account

In June 2011, the world's biggest internet company launched what it hoped would become the world's biggest social network. And we aim to fix it," Google's senior vice president for engineering Vic Gundotra said in a blog post introducing Google, and within a month more than 10 million people had signed up. Seven years later it would be caught up in an embarrassing leak that made exposed its few users' personal information. The hack was embarrassing not only for the vast amount of information lost, but just how little people cared about what was once one of Google's flagship projects. Google aimed to link all of Google's consumer products into one online identity, and the threat it posed to Facebook – which had a virtual monopoly in this space up until then – meant CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared a company-wide "lockdown" while it figured out a strategy to crush its rival. But seven years later, the final downfall of the social network has come at its own hands, following a massive data ...