Google to delete old Gmail and Photos accounts

A Google Account gives you access to GMail, Drive and Photos. They are not separate accounts right?

I assume you can add, Chat, Meet, Calendar, Keep etc.

Its one account yes and the concept of google purging your account or profiles is not new. I have set up a recovery plan long time ago on my google account and set it to my wife and did the same for her account and set it to me.

I do understand why they are doing this. Someone I know had a google account long time ago and they kind of abandoned or forgotten about it. The account eventually became compromised by hackers and started spamming everyone even people on their contact list like myself. The info he had on his account also became leaked too and he was not able to gain access to his account because he did not set up 2FA nor did he save the recovery info.

Jake said:

A Google Account gives you access to GMail, Drive and Photos. They are not separate accounts right?

I assume you can add, Chat, Meet, Calendar, Keep etc.

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Yes, you can do all that with 1 Google account, but if an account has been dormant for 2 years, someone may have set up an account for one specific function or may have set up 2 accounts and forgot about one.

Suspending email and other accounts may be new to Google but it has been practiced for some time by other providers. I've had email accounts that were suspended for lack of use but it was always possible to resurrect them, minus the emails and data. After the infamous Yahoo hack, I resurrected a Yahoo email account in order to delete it permanently.

I think the "tech" article was written by my mom LOL. Sorry Anthony. But Google clearly said this in the post they linked to.

we are updating our inactivity policy for Google Accounts to 2 years across our products. Starting later this year, if a Google Account has not been used or signed into for at least 2 years, we may delete the account and its contents – including content within Google Workspace (Gmail, Docs, Drive, Meet, Calendar) and Google Photos.

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I know people who say they don't have a Google account despite having a Gmail address. They think they are independent.

No mention of YouTube so I assume it will remain untouched.

A friend of mine had an existing Gmail account years ago. One year he decided to buy an Android phone. He was not that computer literate so he registered a new Gmail account on it despite him having one from before. He had no idea he could use his old one. Anyways lets just say he forgot about the old one and abandoned that email address. It eventually got hacked and he could not get back in.