Ask HN: How have you left Google's services?

Re:Ask HN: How have you left Google's services? by apeace on Tuesday August 16, 2016 @12:40PM (#12298626)

Google gives you the option to download all your data stored on their servers, across all Google products [1]. Unfortunately they do not give you an option to delete all your data, but most services have facilities for bulk-deleting [2].

Every few months, I download a backup and then delete everything I can. This is a good tradeoff for me: I get to use all the great Google products, but they don't get to keep a permanent archive of all my data.

One more note: lots of people react to this with, "But what if you desperately need an email from X years/months ago?". Two answers: 1) I've been doing this for a couple years, and I've never needed an old email, and 2) I have the local backup if it's something really important.

[1] https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout

[2] http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/clear-data-google-attempt-regai...

EDIT: Formatting

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Re:Ask HN: How have you left Google's services? by jstayton on Tuesday August 16, 2016 @01:00PM (#12298819)

This is an interesting/creative idea. I've heard about people doing something similar with Twitter and Facebook. While they want you to keep everything forever, it's actually pretty easy to use them more ephemerally.

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