Google wants to know what you want it to do with your stuff when you die. The company has launched a new feature called Inactive Account Manager (not as grim as it could have been, I guess).
“Not a great name, we know,” product manager Andreas Tuerk even admits.
Google Death would probably raise a few eyebrows.
With the feature, you can tell Google what you want it to do with your Gmail messages and data from other Google services.
“For example, you can choose to have your data deleted — after three, six, nine or 12 months of inactivity,” says Tuerk. “Or you can select trusted contacts to receive data from some or all of the following services: +1s; Blogger; Contacts and Circles; Drive; Gmail; Google+ Profiles, Pages and Streams; Picasa Web Albums; Google Voice and YouTube. Before our systems take any action, we’ll first warn you by sending a text message to your cellphone and email to the secondary address you’ve provided.”
This really is an important issue that more web companies should be dealing with as more and more aspects of our lives go digital. For more on what happens to you online when you die, check this out.