I'm nearing the blog's 14th anniversary this fall, and during that time I've read a lot of other blogs' posts and squirreled some of the better content away in the vault as "Drafts" in Blogger. As regular readers know, I'm constantly reviewing those ideas in drafts and prioritizing what I'd like to do/paint/play. At some point in the past, a number of the blogs I follow/mine for ideas were still up, but all pictures were gone. Some of these were simply third-party photo hosting sites changing their sharing policies, yet others appeared to be uploaded photos to blogger that simply went blank. Many of those blogs had very abrupt final blog posts to end a blog, with no announcement of further activity on another social media, so I fear the writers have passed on. For those missing pictures, the posts obviously remained, so anything I found interesting that I didn't need to rely on pictures, I've absconded with the writing so I don't have to reference the declining page.
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| What I see on too many blogs... |
This issue will seem to be exacerbated this December, as Google has updated their inactive account policies and any Google account that has not been signed in for the last 2 years across all products will eventually be deleted.
As the link explains, detactivating a Google account removes everything associated with it: GMail, Google Drive, Google Photos, even Youtube video uploads (Edit: just saw that they have pulled back on Youtube threats, although the logistics of videos unattached to an account must mean archived placedholders. Restart rant)
And yes, that means Blogger/Blogspot accounts as well.
Now, I'm not scheduled to pass away anytime soon, and if I did tomorrow, it would be at least two years before Google removes my "Google footprint" from the internet, if the policy remains the same, but two things need to be considered.
A) Multiple Blog Admins: Not always feasible, but keeping a "live" person who actually logs into their Google account will keeping the blog going into perpetuity. No word on how the blog posts authored by a removed user would look, but it would keep the blog around, if that's your worry when you reach the great beyond.
B) The Great Blogger Archeological Dig: Plenty of blogs are ancient by today's standards (if blogs are n't considered ancient to begin with). While I don't see this process as being instantaneous in December, it does give us appreciative bloggers some time to delve into 'retired' blogs, and at least mine their creativity for our own devices. I personally don't know with those snapshot/web archive sites capture blogs, and if they capture more than their front page, but putting the ideas to the side on your own blog, and giving the appropriate credit if you do use/post it is only proper.
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