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An update to storage policies across your Google Account

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Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#11

Post by jonatron »

sorenjan wrote: post #7

From the email I got from Google a few minutes ago: > Summary of the new policies (effective June 1, 2021): > • If you're inactive for 2 years (24 months) in Gmail, Drive or Photos, we may delete the content in the product(s) in which you're inactive. Google One members who are within their storage quota and in good-standing will not be impacted by this new inactive policy. > • If you exceed your storage limit for 2…

Someone probably just ran the numbers and said we'd save X if we delete inactive users and users of the limit.

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#12

Post by tempest_ »

sorenjan wrote: post #7

From the email I got from Google a few minutes ago: > Summary of the new policies (effective June 1, 2021): > • If you're inactive for 2 years (24 months) in Gmail, Drive or Photos, we may delete the content in the product(s) in which you're inactive. Google One members who are within their storage quota and in good-standing will not be impacted by this new inactive policy. > • If you exceed your storage limit for 2…

Nah, the data has already been harvested and used so it isn't worth storing it anymore (except to you of course).

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#13

Post by thisgoodlife »

rektide wrote: post #3

I used to tell my relatives to use Google Photos, so we wouldn't all lose their photos. I no longer tell them to use Google Photos. Edit: Some of my relatives are growing old. There's a lot of talk of backups & storage. But none of that is going to preserve the digital memories we have shared, after they die. All the old URLs that have been shared will, not rot & wither, but one day just up and vanish. Up to the big…

No matter which service provider you choose, always backup your important data. Simply changing service providers won't make your data safe.

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#15

Post by vecinu »

fhrow4484 wrote: post #9

The same happened to my old "...@hotmail.com" email, Microsoft deleted old childhood emails, still bitter about that. Per https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/oemail... , the limit is 365 days of inactivity.

Likewise, so many amazing memories lost. I wish I could look back to how naive and childish I was at the beginning of my time online.

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#16

Post by kelchm »

Headline seems inaccurate/ misleading to me. Quote from Google in the article:

> If you're over your storage limit for two years, Google may delete your content across Gmail, Drive and Photos

Honestly that seems far more generous than I’d expect — why should Google (or any other company) be expected to store your data indefinitely if you stop paying them?

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#17

Post by ComputerGuru »

fhrow4484 wrote: post #9

The same happened to my old "...@hotmail.com" email, Microsoft deleted old childhood emails, still bitter about that. Per https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/oemail... , the limit is 365 days of inactivity.

I lost my free Hotmail account of almost a decade when the limit was 30 days.

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#18

Post by kllrnohj »

rektide wrote: post #3

I used to tell my relatives to use Google Photos, so we wouldn't all lose their photos. I no longer tell them to use Google Photos. Edit: Some of my relatives are growing old. There's a lot of talk of backups & storage. But none of that is going to preserve the digital memories we have shared, after they die. All the old URLs that have been shared will, not rot & wither, but one day just up and vanish. Up to the big…

If they are using it they aren't inactive? 2 years of no activity on a free account is a long time. What realistically are you existing from anyone else?

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#19

Post by hated »

sorenjan wrote: post #7

From the email I got from Google a few minutes ago: > Summary of the new policies (effective June 1, 2021): > • If you're inactive for 2 years (24 months) in Gmail, Drive or Photos, we may delete the content in the product(s) in which you're inactive. Google One members who are within their storage quota and in good-standing will not be impacted by this new inactive policy. > • If you exceed your storage limit for 2…

Historical data probably isn't as rich in detail as the new stuff they are collecting. I bet the old data is too coarse grained to be effectively joined across a variety of newer data tracking sources.

Re: An update to storage policies across your Google Account

#20

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

fhrow4484 wrote: post #9

The same happened to my old "...@hotmail.com" email, Microsoft deleted old childhood emails, still bitter about that. Per https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/oemail... , the limit is 365 days of inactivity.

When Outlook.com was first made available as a mail domain back in 2012, I immediately went and registered a few accounts, figuring that it would become a high-profile service pretty quickly. One of them I have almost never used, and in its eight-year lifespan it's received...(checks)...7 emails. All of which were from Microsoft.

That account is still up, though, and I don't believe I've checked it from the website itself in years, although it is one of the accounts I've linked to my Outlook app. So the mere act of polling an account for email might be enough to be considered "active".

I haven't checked what would happen if I did the same polling but only used Thunderbird instead.

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