Google is looking to purge old accounts with no activity. As the number of Google services increases, including Youtube accounts, account names have grown exponentially.
Beyond releasing taken emails that are not used, Google will also be saving server space. Each Google account gets 15 GB of storage for free, which costs Google in aggregate. ABC News says:
Have a Google account you haven’t used in a while? If you want to keep it from disappearing, you should sign in before the end of the week.
Under Google’s updated inactive-account policy, which the tech giant announced back in May, accounts that haven’t been used in at least two years could be deleted. Accounts deemed inactive will be erased in a phased-approach beginning Friday.
If you have a Google account that you haven’t used recently, there is still time to save it. Logging into Gmail, watching a Youtube video, or searching on Google (while logged in) will all count for this purpose. Fox Business explains:
On top of signing in to an account, Google has said reading an email, creating a Google Doc, watching a YouTube video and conducting Google searches are among some of the things that qualify as activity. Having a subscription to a news outlet or an app linked to a Google Account does as well.
The potential upcoming deletions stem from an update to its inactivity policy that it implemented in mid-May to boost security efforts. It said at the time that inactive accounts “often rely on old or re-used passwords that may have been compromised, haven’t had two factor authentication set up, and receive fewer security checks by the user.”
Beyond this, Google accounts can now be secured thanks to passkeys, which means no need to remember passwords.
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