Google has passed an update on unused accounts. New plans were announced in this regard. Google said in 2020 that it would remove content stored in inactive accounts in order to lighten its servers. Here, the company was removing only the content linked to the account, not the account itself. Google updated its inactive account policy within the scope of the step it took today. It was announced that accounts that are no longer used in the new period will be deleted by the end of the year.
Google will delete the account which has not been used for at least 2 years
The statement from Google on this issue was as follows: “If a Google Account has not been used or logged into for at least “2 years”, Google will delete this personal account and its content. In addition to the email address becoming inaccessible, Gmail messages, Calendar events, Drive, Docs, Workspace files, and Photos backups will also be removed.” According to the statement, Google will start deleting inactive accounts specifically in December. Of course, it will definitely send multiple notifications to users before that.
There are of course some exceptions to the process. For example, the company is not currently planning to delete accounts that contain YouTube videos. This is actually a logical step because even if the video is old, it can benefit many people. It can get high views even after years. So, the company, which will apply this process to personal accounts, excludes work and school accounts. This update seems logical. There are too many unused accounts. Most of us have opened accounts with funny usernames in our younger years and then did not log in to those accounts for years.
According to the statement, in addition to logging in, performing the following basic actions while logged in counts as activity:
- Read or send a Gmail email
- Use Drive
- Watch a YouTube video
- Download an app from the Play Store
- Use Search
- Use Sign in with Google to sign in to a third-party app or service
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