Google’s first major social-networking service, launched in 2004, was Orkut.
Orkut was created by Orkut Büyükkökten, a Turkish software engineer, while he was working at Google. Google launched the service on January 24, 2004, and named it after its creator. Users could create profiles, connect with friends, join communities, and post testimonials.
Orkut became especially popular in Brazil and India, although it never achieved the worldwide reach of Facebook. Google later introduced other social products, including Google Buzz in 2010 and Google+ in 2011. Orkut was shut down on September 30, 2014, making its history distinct from Google+, which continued until 2019.