oh damn. I've created an account for my newborn son on my (free) google workspace domain and send him emails every few weeks with updates and photos. He'll receive the account when he's like 12. Will these be deleted too?
Same with the Google Pixel thing, where Pixels had less storage than iPhones, but Google constantly ran ads saying that wasn't an issue because you'd have unlimited storage for all your photos and RAWs, forever, with no restrictions, as long as they were auto-uploaded by Google Photos from the Google Camera on your Google Pixel.
And now even compressed jpegs have a size and time limit.
In fairness, they've persisted this policy for the given phones being advertised.
The OG Pixel said original quality for life, and that persists.
Every other Pixel until Pixel 4 had a time limit on unlimited quality original uploads, and THAT persists.
And even for Pixel 4 & Pixel 5, they're persisting the unlimited "high quality" storage option that they advertised the phones as having.
Don't get me wrong, I'm annoyed enough about them dropping unlimited original on the 4/5 that I download the 4k videos off of Google Photos and re-upload them over an old Pixel I have to get them to not count against my storage limit. But the ads have matched their current commitment, and they haven't reneged on any of the policies advertised for that given phone, at least.
If you make "forever" claims in your ads I feel like you shouldn't be able to say later that "forever" was true five years ago, but today it retroactively means a finite timespan.
That's a neat idea, but I'd be really, really distrustful of putting an effort of genuine feelings into a platform hosted by somebody else. That's a long time for Google not to screw it up, and it'll be sad when they do screw it up.
Some years back, I tried to take photos out of a random family album to scan them. The album was built so there was a plastic sheet in front of the photos, to hold them in place / protect them. Well, that sheet ended up ripping bits out of the photos, and it's glossy enough that I can't scan the photos through it. Be careful with assumptions of how long physical products last.
Also, books used to be printed on better paper; modern cheap books will not last as long as the old ones did. I have a couple of collector's edition books printed on acid-free paper...
:-) It's not like I'm using an old analog camera, or delete the files after printing.
It's just nice to a/ have an extra copy just in case and b/ it's more enjoyable/sentimental than looking at photos on a laptop, smartphone or TV.
At least my kids really enjoy it a lot. They liked to look at the albums my mom made from my pictures when they were between 2 and 5, still do today, even though they perfectly know how to navigate to all the photos on a tablet. That's when I decided to do it.
I would be surprised if they did this for Workspace accounts. Deleting data from a organization would be a disaster for Google. I.e. an account may be at a center of a lawsuit or subject to data retention laws.
Hmmm is my G Suite account different from a Workspace account? I got this email a few weeks ago saying I hadn't logged in for awhile and they were going to delete my data: https://i.imgur.com/XAEXQWb.png
This subthread is confused. Google will delete long idle nin-domain users and idle domains, but will not delete long idle users within an active domain.
This I believe only applies to the root/admin account of the GSuite domain. Extra users created in the account are just extra user slots for that account.
I have been writing a journal addressed to my son. It is just a markdown file. But this system has a flaw that is I go back and edit old entries.
I would never trust a 3rd party for this kind of project. But I like that you cannot edit your emails. It just feels more honest.
Now I am thinking of sending him hand written letters by mail. And just save them until he is old enough. I can add photos or his other favorite things in the letters. It would be a lot more fun to open these letters in the future instead of reading a text file.
ProtonMail just launched an import/export tool that not only allows you to store your mails locally, but provides easy migration paths from Gmail, Yahoo, etc. Might be something to look into, and will also probably be a boon to privacy overall.
Regardless, all you'd have to do is log into it once a year to avoid this. You should probably be backing it up externally at least this often if you care about the content...
I used to do exactly this. However, a couple of years ago when my second child was born I got a family domain and gave them both local email addresses. Then it was just a matter of getting a cheap email host and migrating over from gmail.
I also have a regular ema backup script that backsup the inboxes so the emails are always available offline!
I recently had an idea for a similar service that uses a storage account of your choosing as a backend. The plan was to market it as a “vault” for your emails and attachments.
Basically, you get an email address, and any email you send to it is streamed to a storage account of your choosing, with optional minimal processing (e.g., convert your emails into Markdown prior to storage).
I spent a while setting up the mail processing backend using Postfix + a mail filter written in Rust.
I ultimately ended up scrapping the project because:
A) It didn’t seem like there was a large enough market of paying customers.
B) There already are a few services that do something like this, but with a focus on attachments.
I'm not seeing the Inactive Account Manager on my paid Google Workspace account, so I don't think it applies there. If it does on legacy free domains, I'm guessing that you'll get a notice in one of the admin newsletters.
