"especially when the storage requirements are so tiny" Hardware is not the only contributor into the cost of keeping data available on the web site. There is e

"especially when the storage requirements are so tiny" Hardware is not the only contributor into the cost of keeping data available on the web site. There is electricity cost, servers administration cost, cost of keeping up with the updates, legal cost of dealing with requests to put data on your servers. Finally, there is opportunity cost -- the same team that manages these Group features could be doing something more useful. That's why Google is not maintaining unsuccessful applications. There is another reason to forget old data: reducing noise. Usually newer data is more useful than the old one, so it forgetting old data reduces noise and makes it easier to find more useful information.