Google has finally decided to remove the forced linking of Google+ and YouTube along with its other services. YouTube will be the first to be affected and in the coming weeks, we will no longer need a Google+ profile to create a channel or comment on a video. Later, all other services will also be stop linking with Google+.

Bradley Horowitz, Google Vice President of Streams, Photos and Sharing said in a blog post regarding the removal of forced linking of Google+ and YouTube:

“People have told us that accessing all of their Google stuff with one account makes life a whole lot easier. But we’ve also heard that it doesn’t make sense for your Google+ profile to be your identity in all the other Google products you use.”

This does not mean that Google+ will disappear altogether, but it shows that Google understands that it cannot force a service to users who have never requested for that service. Actually, it is surprising that it took so many years for Google to understand this simple concept.

And since a lot of information on your Google+ profile is available in other services, Google will allow you to delete your Google+ profile while maintaining a functional account of the rest of the services. This mainly concerns the YouTube users who have been forced to specially create a Google+ profile to comment on videos.

After Google+ and YouTube are decoupled, Google users will require only a Google Account to communicate with contacts, create a YouTube channel, share content and use other features from other Google services.

Google+ was launched in June 2011 as a rival to Facebook, but very less people were attracted to it. Google now says that it will make its social network “more targeted”, and remove “features that are not essential.” Earlier this month, Google decided to shut down Google+ Photos on August 1 and now Google has decided to remove the forced integration of Google+ and YouTube.