Google at Rose Cottage

Give your old accounts closure

Great to see that Google is trying to be a good corporate citizen by providing the ability to choose what happens to your accounts after your death (or after any extended period of inactivity).  All configurable through the Google Inactive Account Manager. People are already dubbing it Google Death.

Obsolete accounts clutter up vast arrays of storage and the problem can only get worse as more people go online.

I'm sure this is not just about customer needs.  Look at it from the provider's perspective.  Google has introduced any number of tools over the years and some of those have now been killed off.  There's been a good deal of spring cleaning of late at Googleplex, California, with the likes of Google Reader and Google Wave either retired or put on noticed.  Once the tools are gone then the accounts that used them are redundant, too.

I wonder if other giants, like Facebook will also come to the party and remove accounts that are no longer active. I fear that they will be less enthusiastic where their business revolves around having the biggest user base in the social media community, even if some of those accounts belong to people who have long since shuffled of this mortal coil.

Spring clean evolution

Managing the digital afterlife (NZ Herald)

Setting up the Google Inactive Account Manager (Cnet)

Google introduces the Inactive Account Manager (eWeek)

Facebook doesn't deactivate inactive accounts

Cleaning up a Facebook account to remove inactive friends (eHow)

Euphemisms for the inevitable end