Google creates Inactive Account Manager so you can control your data after you're gone
We don't want to be the ones to break the news to you, but there is an incredibly high chance that we're all going to die at some point. In the before times, when you died you had physical items that needed to be sorted out, but now more and more of our lives are digital and there hasn't been a good way to sort out that data. Google is taking on the task by creating the Inactive Account Manager so you can control your data after you're gone.
The setup is fairly simple. You start out by adding a phone number and an optional e-mail address, so Google can alert you before anything is triggered. Then you choose how long you want your timeout watch to be. The alert will go out after 1 month of not logging into Google, then the timeout can be triggered at 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, or 1 year. At that point, your account and data can be deleted if you wish, or you can set up to 10 people as a "trusted contact" and share certain data with them. You can also set up a Gmail auto-response that will go out to anyone who e-mails you after the timeout period has been triggered.
Obviously, the Inactive Account Manager doesn't necessarily have to trigger upon your death. You could end up moving to a tropical island off the grid, or simply moving on to a different service, and stop using Google. But, whatever the reason, you now have some extra control over your account for when you are gone.
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