5 ms·

Google Drive trash items will be automatically deleted after 30 days

64 points by haunter 6y ago

blakesterz 6y ago
I saw that earlier when I was looking in my drive and I was surprised that the trash hung around forever before this change! 30 days seems like a reasonable amount of time for something to stay there. I guess I just assumed things don't last forever after I trash them. I think ios does the same thing in the photos app?
Navarr 6y ago
I wonder if this wasn't done previously so that when a file is shared, if it is trashed, the person it was shared with still has access to it?
- xnx 6y ago
  I believe this policy was first implemented on shared files: "Files in shared drives trash are already automatically deleted after 30 days."
- saghm 6y ago
  EDIT: deleted due to responding to the wrong comment
echelon 6y ago
Google probably made a lot of money with this low-hanging fruit. Think about all that data they'll be able to purge.
- cma 6y ago
  I would have almost thought they would make more money keeping the trash around to analyze with newer and newer algorithms to build a better psychological profile on people.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  But they probably also lose a lot of money from all the people who now won't need to upgrade to a paid storage plan. Considering data stored for a long time and very rarely accessed is effectively free in a modern datacenter (since disks are all IO limited not capacity limited in cloud deployments), I reckon they're losing money with this change. There's a good chance they're doing it because their lawyers have told them to - clicking the "send to trash" button could be considered a GDPR deletion request, and if Google leaves that document in the trash forever, they could be found in breach of GDPR rules.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
CapriciousCptl 6y ago
For all the hate Google gets this seems pretty reasonable. In fact, I thought they already did this. AFAIK, most email services do the same.
- caturopath 6y ago
  Gmail trash deletes. It's Drive trash that doesn't delete.
markdown 6y ago
If a Google exec decides a new Google service is trash...
Google234 6y ago
The killed by google site should now include every item put into the google drive trash.
- function_seven 6y ago
  This is the last straw for me. I use the Trash feature to hold my most valuable files. If it's safely stored in the trash, I can't accidentally delete it, right? Looking for recommendations for non-Google trashcans that provide strong guarantees of durability...
  - sethammons 6y ago
    Have you considered a manual workaround? Print the docs and put them in a trash can at home or work. This gives you offline access, even without power.
    - function_seven 6y ago
      The whole point of cloud storage is so I can access the same trashcan from work, from home, or when I'm on the go. Are you seriously suggesting that when I'm at the coffee shop, I use their trashcan for this purpose? I miss “Don’t Be Evil.”
      - saagarjha 6y ago
        Who said it had to be the same trashcan? You should pay for a service that syncs the contents of the trashcan, so you can reach into the nearest one to have all your files ready for you.
      - SahAssar 6y ago
        I'm been pre-MVP:ing a portable trashcan-like device you can carry on your back, in your hand or even slug across your upper body for just this usecase. Currently I'm seeking investment in a pre-seed round to recruit the UX-specialists, digital marketers and growth hackers to set up the sign-up MVP website to get this into a seed round. The product is considered to be a sort of cloth receptacle with 1-3 handles or "straps" as we've com to call them, that can be used with almost any human protrusion, but the final product might change. We are also thinking about a zero-strap version that we just call "the unStrap". Of course it will be cloud-native, k8s-native and almost virtually-sustainable. I have my C-CTO working on the multi-native strategy right now.
josefresco 6y ago
I wonder if this will hurt their bottom line (does trash count against your quota?)
- freedomben 6y ago
  Trash items do count against your quota.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Even though trash counts towards a user's quota... users are, by definition, using less than their quota. And the percentage of users paying for increased Drive storage is likely a small percentage of overall users. So deleting trashed items will mean Google is storing a lot less data, and probably not impacting people's storage purchase decisions much/at all. I expect it'd be a net benefit for their bottom line.
- saghm 6y ago
  I imagine that anyone who hits their quota and wants to add more would start making room by deleting their trash. I can't imagine there are many instances of people increasing their quota just so they can keep stuff in their trash around, and if there are, these people will probably just move the stuff out of the trash so they can keep it after this change. More likely, Google will be deleting vast quantities of data and saving money due to the reduced amount of storage they're using.
- davchana 6y ago
  Yes, as of today, trash was counted against the storage limit.
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Definitely just an "aligning reality with expectation" change. Most people probably assume their trash is occasionally cleared. It's arguably potentially problematic for them if they are keeping data around users asked them to trash. Of course, when they first wrote this, I imagine keeping trash indefinitely had a nearly nonexistent impact on the bottom line, and now there's probably several datacenter racks worth of drives dedicated to storing and replicating trash.
- caturopath 6y ago
  > Of course, when they first wrote this, I imagine keeping trash indefinitely had a nearly nonexistent impact on the bottom line, and now there's probably several datacenter racks worth of drives dedicated to storing and replicating trash. Why is why they don't just let everyone upload HD videos to Youtube. Oh wait
- BlueGh0st 6y ago
  Precisely this. From the email I received from Google > ..Google Drive is making a change so that its trash behaves more consistently with the rest of Google applications (such as Gmail) with regards to automatic deletion.
- ksk 6y ago
  I agree with this policy in principle, but a ton of non-technical people in my office know that the recycle bin in Windows is never automatically emptied and rely on that fact (scary!). The 'expectation' can vary based on your experience IMO.
RandomBacon 6y ago
Just like how Gmail is supposed to automatically deletes trash items after 30 days? /s because it doesn't, at least on my Gmail account.
Thaxll 6y ago
Speaking of Google drive I have a really annoying bug on the mobile app where it tries to synchronize offline files all the time. I go to the Offline tab and I have 0 files...
- pishpash 6y ago
  This bug has been around forever and of course it's a likely wontfix for Google. https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/209777/drive-sends-an-almost-daily-1-file-is-now-available-offline-notification https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/209777/drive-sen...
- NikolaeVarius 6y ago
  Oh goddammit, I knew I wasn't doing something stupid.
olyjohn 6y ago
This is gonna suck for the people who store their important documents in the trash.
- riantogo 6y ago
  "I would have gladly released my tax returns but unfortunately it was saved in the trash folder"
- kryogen1c 6y ago
  a decidedly nonzero amount of people, vis a vi https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
  - jetrink 6y ago
    It comes up regularly on the subreddit for tech support stories, /r/talesfromtechsupport. Just a few: https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/22ke8s/is_there_any_way_to_get_my_deleted_files_back_ive/ https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/22ke8... https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/c24q20/it_keeps_happening/ https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/c24q2... https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/flgsnn/recycle_bin_follies/ https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/flgsn... https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/65cam1/you_deleted_all_my_files/ https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/65cam... https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/bks9ei/i_get_yelled_at_for_cleaning_out_deleted/ https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/bks9e... https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/9wrscp/i_need_my_deleted_emails_back/ https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/9wrsc...
    - FirstLvR 6y ago
      am dying of laughter, wtf is wrong with these people
    - SamBam 6y ago
      > CW: Yes, I move them to the recycling bin to make them new again so I can reuse the files. > IT: This is the trash bin, you would move files here to delete them off of your computer. > CW: IT IS NOT A TRASH CAN, IT IS A RECYCLING BIN! IT SAYS SO RIGHT UNDER THE ICON! Ok, now wait a second, why the hell is it called a recycling bin anyway? "Recycling" doesn't mean "plan to throw this away later, but maybe I'll still grab it out of the trash can in case I made a mistake." Who came up with this metaphor?
nottorp 6y ago
You mean it didn't up to now? I've always assumed that when I delete something it's gone.
- faitswulff 6y ago
  This post was the impetus for my clearing out my trash and gaining something like 2GB back.
danso 6y ago
Ignoring the technical cost, keeing Trash files indefinitely (or for unexpectedly long periods of time) has to be at least a bit of a privacy kerfluffle risk for Google, right? People freak out when they do a GDPR data request and find just how large and long a memory Google has of their searches and locations. They likely would be even less happy finding out Google has held on to files that were long ago deleted for important and/or personal reasons.
- davchana 6y ago
  Even without GDPR, I downloaded my location data from Google Takeout, it was whopping 1.7GB of pure json. Same data was few kbs in 2012or 2014 when takeout was new.
sabujp 6y ago
umm, good?
crazygringo 6y ago
This is a feature, good! I was surprised last year, when my Drive was running out of space, to discover everything I'd ever deleted was still there and counting against my quota, even from years before. I mean, it was easy enough to empty the trash and fix it, but still -- I'd just assumed things got deleted after something reasonable like a month. A month feels "UX standard" to me.
dumbfounder 6y ago
I think this should be a lesson to developers, set a reasonable retention period for users from day one. Maybe on the back end make it longer so you can avoid some catastrophes, but once you give a user something it is very hard to take it away. I bet Google makes a lot of people very unhappy with this change.
m0zg 6y ago
Good. I had a "terabyte for life" as an ex-Googler, and Google has recently withdrawn that, so it started asking me to upgrade to their paid offering. I was like, wtf, I don't store all that much data there, how come it's showing 900+GB is in use. Turns out the trash was never deleted, and once I deleted it usage came down to less than 20GB. Seems like this could backfire badly on their upgrade revenues TBH, for this reason.
a1pulley 6y ago
A few months ago, I moved all my old photos from Drive to a local media server. I had to manually call an API endpoint [1] to remove several hundred thousand files from trash—it took 30 hrs to finish its batch job. [1] https://developers.google.com/drive/api/v2/reference/files/emptyTrash https://developers.google.com/drive/api/v2/reference/files/e...
oriettaxx 6y ago
deleted for the user, maybe. I doubt google delete data at all. btw: it took me a lot of time to delete my trash once I started cleaning up an almost full gmail account: a bit like when you want to delete your old facebook posts.

64 points by haunter 6y ago

I saw that earlier when I was looking in my drive and I was surprised that the trash hung around forever before this change! 30 days seems like a reasonable amount of time for something to stay there. I guess I just assumed things don't last forever after I trash them. I think ios does the same thing in the photos app?

Navarr 6y ago

I wonder if this wasn't done previously so that when a file is shared, if it is trashed, the person it was shared with still has access to it?

xnx 6y ago
I believe this policy was first implemented on shared files: "Files in shared drives trash are already automatically deleted after 30 days."
saghm 6y ago
EDIT: deleted due to responding to the wrong comment

echelon 6y ago

Google probably made a lot of money with this low-hanging fruit. Think about all that data they'll be able to purge.

cma 6y ago
I would have almost thought they would make more money keeping the trash around to analyze with newer and newer algorithms to build a better psychological profile on people.
londons_explore 6y ago
But they probably also lose a lot of money from all the people who now won't need to upgrade to a paid storage plan. Considering data stored for a long time and very rarely accessed is effectively free in a modern datacenter (since disks are all IO limited not capacity limited in cloud deployments), I reckon they're losing money with this change. There's a good chance they're doing it because their lawyers have told them to - clicking the "send to trash" button could be considered a GDPR deletion request, and if Google leaves that document in the trash forever, they could be found in breach of GDPR rules.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

CapriciousCptl 6y ago

For all the hate Google gets this seems pretty reasonable. In fact, I thought they already did this. AFAIK, most email services do the same.

caturopath 6y ago
Gmail trash deletes. It's Drive trash that doesn't delete.

markdown 6y ago

If a Google exec decides a new Google service is trash...

Google234 6y ago

The killed by google site should now include every item put into the google drive trash.

function_seven 6y ago
This is the last straw for me. I use the Trash feature to hold my most valuable files. If it's safely stored in the trash, I can't accidentally delete it, right? Looking for recommendations for non-Google trashcans that provide strong guarantees of durability...
- sethammons 6y ago
  Have you considered a manual workaround? Print the docs and put them in a trash can at home or work. This gives you offline access, even without power.
  - function_seven 6y ago
    The whole point of cloud storage is so I can access the same trashcan from work, from home, or when I'm on the go. Are you seriously suggesting that when I'm at the coffee shop, I use their trashcan for this purpose? I miss “Don’t Be Evil.”
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      Who said it had to be the same trashcan? You should pay for a service that syncs the contents of the trashcan, so you can reach into the nearest one to have all your files ready for you.
    - SahAssar 6y ago
      I'm been pre-MVP:ing a portable trashcan-like device you can carry on your back, in your hand or even slug across your upper body for just this usecase. Currently I'm seeking investment in a pre-seed round to recruit the UX-specialists, digital marketers and growth hackers to set up the sign-up MVP website to get this into a seed round. The product is considered to be a sort of cloth receptacle with 1-3 handles or "straps" as we've com to call them, that can be used with almost any human protrusion, but the final product might change. We are also thinking about a zero-strap version that we just call "the unStrap". Of course it will be cloud-native, k8s-native and almost virtually-sustainable. I have my C-CTO working on the multi-native strategy right now.

josefresco 6y ago

I wonder if this will hurt their bottom line (does trash count against your quota?)

freedomben 6y ago
Trash items do count against your quota.
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Even though trash counts towards a user's quota... users are, by definition, using less than their quota. And the percentage of users paying for increased Drive storage is likely a small percentage of overall users. So deleting trashed items will mean Google is storing a lot less data, and probably not impacting people's storage purchase decisions much/at all. I expect it'd be a net benefit for their bottom line.
saghm 6y ago
I imagine that anyone who hits their quota and wants to add more would start making room by deleting their trash. I can't imagine there are many instances of people increasing their quota just so they can keep stuff in their trash around, and if there are, these people will probably just move the stuff out of the trash so they can keep it after this change. More likely, Google will be deleting vast quantities of data and saving money due to the reduced amount of storage they're using.
davchana 6y ago
Yes, as of today, trash was counted against the storage limit.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

Definitely just an "aligning reality with expectation" change. Most people probably assume their trash is occasionally cleared. It's arguably potentially problematic for them if they are keeping data around users asked them to trash. Of course, when they first wrote this, I imagine keeping trash indefinitely had a nearly nonexistent impact on the bottom line, and now there's probably several datacenter racks worth of drives dedicated to storing and replicating trash.

caturopath 6y ago
> Of course, when they first wrote this, I imagine keeping trash indefinitely had a nearly nonexistent impact on the bottom line, and now there's probably several datacenter racks worth of drives dedicated to storing and replicating trash. Why is why they don't just let everyone upload HD videos to Youtube. Oh wait
BlueGh0st 6y ago
Precisely this. From the email I received from Google > ..Google Drive is making a change so that its trash behaves more consistently with the rest of Google applications (such as Gmail) with regards to automatic deletion.
ksk 6y ago
I agree with this policy in principle, but a ton of non-technical people in my office know that the recycle bin in Windows is never automatically emptied and rely on that fact (scary!). The 'expectation' can vary based on your experience IMO.

RandomBacon 6y ago

Just like how Gmail is supposed to automatically deletes trash items after 30 days? /s because it doesn't, at least on my Gmail account.

Thaxll 6y ago

Speaking of Google drive I have a really annoying bug on the mobile app where it tries to synchronize offline files all the time. I go to the Offline tab and I have 0 files...

pishpash 6y ago
This bug has been around forever and of course it's a likely wontfix for Google. https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/209777/drive-sends-an-almost-daily-1-file-is-now-available-offline-notification https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/209777/drive-sen...
NikolaeVarius 6y ago
Oh goddammit, I knew I wasn't doing something stupid.

olyjohn 6y ago

This is gonna suck for the people who store their important documents in the trash.

riantogo 6y ago
"I would have gladly released my tax returns but unfortunately it was saved in the trash folder"
kryogen1c 6y ago
a decidedly nonzero amount of people, vis a vi https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
- jetrink 6y ago
  It comes up regularly on the subreddit for tech support stories, /r/talesfromtechsupport. Just a few: https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/22ke8s/is_there_any_way_to_get_my_deleted_files_back_ive/ https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/22ke8... https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/c24q20/it_keeps_happening/ https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/c24q2... https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/flgsnn/recycle_bin_follies/ https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/flgsn... https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/65cam1/you_deleted_all_my_files/ https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/65cam... https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/bks9ei/i_get_yelled_at_for_cleaning_out_deleted/ https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/bks9e... https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/9wrscp/i_need_my_deleted_emails_back/ https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/9wrsc...
  - FirstLvR 6y ago
    am dying of laughter, wtf is wrong with these people
  - SamBam 6y ago
    > CW: Yes, I move them to the recycling bin to make them new again so I can reuse the files. > IT: This is the trash bin, you would move files here to delete them off of your computer. > CW: IT IS NOT A TRASH CAN, IT IS A RECYCLING BIN! IT SAYS SO RIGHT UNDER THE ICON! Ok, now wait a second, why the hell is it called a recycling bin anyway? "Recycling" doesn't mean "plan to throw this away later, but maybe I'll still grab it out of the trash can in case I made a mistake." Who came up with this metaphor?

nottorp 6y ago

You mean it didn't up to now? I've always assumed that when I delete something it's gone.

faitswulff 6y ago
This post was the impetus for my clearing out my trash and gaining something like 2GB back.

danso 6y ago

Ignoring the technical cost, keeing Trash files indefinitely (or for unexpectedly long periods of time) has to be at least a bit of a privacy kerfluffle risk for Google, right? People freak out when they do a GDPR data request and find just how large and long a memory Google has of their searches and locations. They likely would be even less happy finding out Google has held on to files that were long ago deleted for important and/or personal reasons.

davchana 6y ago
Even without GDPR, I downloaded my location data from Google Takeout, it was whopping 1.7GB of pure json. Same data was few kbs in 2012or 2014 when takeout was new.

sabujp 6y ago

umm, good?

crazygringo 6y ago

This is a feature, good! I was surprised last year, when my Drive was running out of space, to discover everything I'd ever deleted was still there and counting against my quota, even from years before. I mean, it was easy enough to empty the trash and fix it, but still -- I'd just assumed things got deleted after something reasonable like a month. A month feels "UX standard" to me.

dumbfounder 6y ago

I think this should be a lesson to developers, set a reasonable retention period for users from day one. Maybe on the back end make it longer so you can avoid some catastrophes, but once you give a user something it is very hard to take it away. I bet Google makes a lot of people very unhappy with this change.

m0zg 6y ago

Good. I had a "terabyte for life" as an ex-Googler, and Google has recently withdrawn that, so it started asking me to upgrade to their paid offering. I was like, wtf, I don't store all that much data there, how come it's showing 900+GB is in use. Turns out the trash was never deleted, and once I deleted it usage came down to less than 20GB. Seems like this could backfire badly on their upgrade revenues TBH, for this reason.

a1pulley 6y ago

A few months ago, I moved all my old photos from Drive to a local media server. I had to manually call an API endpoint [1] to remove several hundred thousand files from trash—it took 30 hrs to finish its batch job. [1] https://developers.google.com/drive/api/v2/reference/files/emptyTrash https://developers.google.com/drive/api/v2/reference/files/e...

oriettaxx 6y ago

deleted for the user, maybe. I doubt google delete data at all. btw: it took me a lot of time to delete my trash once I started cleaning up an almost full gmail account: a bit like when you want to delete your old facebook posts.