Google will start deleting inactive Google accounts starting December 2023: Why should you care

Google on Saturday sent emails to its billions of users, saying the company updating the inactivity period for a Google Account to two years across all its products and services. This change starts rolling out now, and will apply to any Google Account that’s been inactive, “meaning it has not been signed into or used within a two-year period”. An inactive account and any content in it will be eligible for deletion from December 1, 2023, the tech giant said. These changes do not impact you unless you have been inactive in your Google Account for two years or have not used your account to sign in to any Google service for over two years.

“While the changes go into effect today, the earliest we would enforce any account deletion would be December 2023,” said Google.

If the account is considered inactive, Google will send several reminder emails to both users and their recovery emails (if any have been provided) before the company takes any action or delete any account content. 

“These reminder emails will go out at least 8 months before any action is taken on your account. After a Google Account is deleted, the Gmail address for the deleted account cannot be used again when creating a new Google Account,” said the company.

The company said that this change is meant to free up storage space and protect user data from unauthorized access. It will measure account activity based on certain actions, such as reading or sending an email, using Google Drive, watching videos on YouTube, downloading apps from Google Play Store, using Google Search, or signing in with a Google account to third-party apps or websites.

The company advised the users to review their account activity and settings regularly and to back up their important data. If you have signed in to your Google Account recently in the past two years, your account is considered active and will not be deleted, said the company.

Meanwhile, Google Keep has finally added a feature that many users have been waiting for: version history. This feature will save users from manually typing data that they have deleted by mistake.