When I used to work at Google, making sure things people deleted were completely removed was something people took very seriously. With caches and backups deletions wouldn't be immediately effective everywhere, but it was very important that things people had deleted were, within weeks, really fully gone.

No offense to you, but why should I trust you or Google that what you say is true? I can have my neighbors pinky swear that they won't break into my house, but I still choose to lock my door every day.

You lock your doors because you don't trust your _neighbors_? That's madness.

Companies often face legal requirements that your data is truly gone, e.g. see the European Union's Data Protection Directive. So it's not just a pinky swear -- there is some legal force behind it. (Which happens to be true for the neighbor situation as well, so you really don't need to get pinky swears from everyone.)

I don't lock my door because there's a lot of people around that I don't trust. My neighbors are some of them. I don't know half of them by name. Why should I trust them?

> Companies often face legal requirements that your data is truly gone, e.g. see the European Union's Data Protection Directive.

Maybe that's part of the difference. In the US you have to keep records of stuff. At my company, we have to keep records for ~7 years, IIRC.

Unfortunately in the US it is the opposite. The government often forces you (or at least tries to force you) to not delete it incase they want it later. Especially if you are an Internet Service Provider.

I am 99.99% sure you are telling the truth. It's that last 0.01% that gets ya.