With all the news about Google’s product-killing spree and rapidly filling graveyard recently, it’s quite strange to think that Google’s newest feature is designed to help its users after death. Yep, Google is offering to help you transition into the digital afterlife with its new inactive account manager.
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In an official blog post, product manager Andreas Tuerk admitted the name wasn’t the greatest, but the feature is basically designed to let you tell Google what to do with all your data if you can’t use your account any more or you pass away. The tool allows you to select a time out period (three months, six months or a year) after which Google will take action if your account hasn’t been active.
Google will then alert you via email on a secondary account or an SMS before the time runs out, and if you still don’t reply or use a Gproduct, it can contact your friends and family members and share your uploads with them if you wish. You can even skip that step and set it up to delete your account entirely if you’re worried about what will be done with your information after your death.
The inactive account manager allows you to select contacts to receive access to anything from your +1s to Blogger posts, contacts, circles; Drive files, Gmail, Google+ profiles, pages and streams, Picasa web albums, Google Voice and YouTube data, but it’s currently not available for Google Apps accounts.
Tuerk says the team hopes the “new feature will enable you to plan your digital afterlife — in a way that protects your privacy and security — and make life easier for your loved ones after you’re gone.” But as TechCrunch points out, it could raise some legal complications if your family wants access to your photos, videos and emails after you’re gone. It seems that what you set up before death will be quite final though — a Google spokesperson told the site that “when there’s a conflict, we will honour the preference you’ve made in inactive account manager to the extent permitted by law.”
