It may seem that Google cleans up the code in its apps to keep them as clean as possible and free of superfluous code, but that’s not the case: although they are constantly updated, apps like Google Play Services seem like a mixed bag. This week I was playing around with the activities in the app and discovered that continues to offer access to Google+. As you’ve read: despite being completely dead for four years, Google has yet to clean up Android’s code.
I remember as if it were yesterday the presentation of Google+, this social platform that aspired to compete face to face with Facebook and that jumped into the ring of networks after experiences like Google Wave. The start of G+ in 2011 involved a complete change in the web: from users who used the social network to chat with other people to web pages that, to be taken into account by Google, added Google+ buttons to their sharing tools and fought for their readers to “+1” them “. . In fact, all of the company’s products were for Google+. Including Android, of course.
Google+ disappeared in 2019, but remains on Android
Vestiges of Google+ hidden in the latest available version of Google Play Services
Google Play Services or Google Play Services is a dinosaur that not only evolves every year gaining tons of features but also accumulates such mass of software inside that Google prefers to disable older ones instead of cleaning up code. And these are perfectly seen by analyzing the activities of the application and the XML configuration file, the one called “Flags”.
I usually play around with the most popular apps looking for latent new things that the devs, although they haven’t enabled them for the general public, if they keep them in code waiting to work if the right switch is discovered. And looking for new features in Google Play Services (I was looking for the new timelinebut I couldn’t get it to work) I came across the remains of Google+. And I left with the same face that you will surely have when you know that “Google+ is still in Play Services!?”. Yes, as is.
The activities constitute the different sections of the applications; and they can work as a kind of shortcut to certain options enabled in the software. For example, WhatsApp has activities to open new chats or start creating a new avatar, Gmail to open tasks or chat, and Google Play Services for a ton of features. Connecting to Google+ to share content via the social network is one of them, but there are many others.
On the left, activities on Google Play services related to Google+; Good, trying to connect to Google+ after performing activities
From Play Services, Google+ activity can be run (you need a mobile with root access) so that the device connects to the online platform looking for credentials. Obviously, and since Google+ is completely dismantled, loading the service is impossible, but It is still found in all the millions of androids distributed worldwide and certified by Google. Even the Google Play Services XML includes configuration settings from the old Google+.
Google+ settings hidden in Google Play Services settings
The top fields hint at various functions of the off social network, including enabling contacts’ birthdays. And they remain latent, fattening gaming services that aren’t exactly light.
That Google doesn’t clean up its app code shows a deep lack of optimization
Google Play services have gained vital importance within Android thanks to the fact that they are the key for a device to work in the usual way. Without these services, the Play Store does not work, WhatsApp cannot make a backup, the device loses a large part of its basic applications and even its notifications. They are so important that cleaning up their code of unusable functions is too complex and expensive, just wander through their activities.
Play Services is an application that accumulates more than a GB in cache. It is also one of those that consume the most energy within Android and one of those that causes the most risk of instability: often a wrong operation ends up leading to a dead battery. And the fact that it keeps the Google+ connection is an example of the extreme optimization that this vital Android software needs: who knows what obsolete vestiges it still keeps.
Picture | Bing Creator with editing
In Xataka Android | What happened to Google Talk
