Inactive Google Account Policy
A Google Account gives you Google-wide access to most Google products, such as Google Ads, Gmail, and YouTube, using the same username and password.
An inactive Google Account is an account that has not been used within a 2-year period. Google reserves the right to delete an inactive Google Account and its activity and data if you are inactive across Google for at least two years.
Google also reserves the right to delete data in a product if you are inactive in that product for at least two years. This is determined based on each product's inactivity policies.
How Google defines activity
A Google Account that is in use is considered active. Activity might include these actions you take when you sign in or while you’re signed in to your Google Account:
- Reading or sending an email
- Using Google Drive
- Watching a YouTube video
- Sharing a photo
- Downloading an app
- Using Google Search
- Using Sign in with Google to sign in to a third-party app or service
Google Account activity is demonstrated by account and not by device. You can take actions on any surface where you’re signed in to your Google Account, for example, on your phone.
If you have more than one Google Account set up on your device, you’ll want to make sure each account is used within a 2-year period.
What happens when your Google Account is inactive
When your Google Account has not been used within a 2-year period, your Google Account, that is then deemed inactive, and all of its content and data may be deleted. Before this happens, Google will give you an opportunity to take an action in your account by:
- Sending email notifications to your Google Account
- Sending notifications to your recovery email, if any exists
Google products reserve the right to delete your data when your account has not been used within that product for a 2-year period.
December 1, 2023 is the earliest a Google Account will be deleted due to this policy.
If I logged back into an account (in any system) I hadn't used in years and found it was gone, I wouldn't be that surprised. If I got into the account but found the information it held was gone, I'd be pissed. One is simple upkeep, the other feels like tampering.
That being said, if you haven't even accessed anything in an account in several years, why have it? The only thing I can think of where you wouldn't ever have accessed it (thereby keeping it alive in Google's definition) would be as archived storage. That's pretty dangerous to do in someone else's cloud, assuming it will be fine. Even active storage it's still recommended to have redundancy in backup locations.
I used some of those free websites years ago for storage and holding animation movies. They would have a policy of removing an account after only a month of inactivity. So while I was using them I'd make sure to log in regularly...I did not expect them to keep things around when I moved on to other things, it's why I copied the files I wanted to keep to other places locally.
Email is a bit different to me than like cloud storage, because so much gets tied there -- social media, banking, etc., that I don't like the idea of gambling with it unless I'm sure an account is a throwaway. People incarcerated, hospitalized or dead may not be able to regularly access their email, yet the information inside may be vital to them and their family.
Ghoulish, but as I mentioned earlier, now I have to remind people to be sure to log into their dead relative's email accounts to preserve information.
This is why it's great to have discussions - I never even considered those possibilities. My concern about pushing the responsibility onto Google to keep them forever still remains. Even if Google intended to make them permanent, that doesn't guarantee anything at all. A hacked account, loss of power/backups at Google, Google going away (I mean they aren't immune to that)...there's ways to backup vital information on anything, and even though I'm hypocritical in saying so, everyone should always have one or even two backups in different places for everything. Because shit does happen, all the time, and even if you could file against Google for any loss, the data is still gone if there's no other source.
The problem is it isn’t just data backups, it’s that one’s email is the backing account for many other accounts online either as a TFA or as the username for some site.