Retention & Deletion · Company commitment
License lasts as long as your IP rights; removed content stops being public in a reasonable time, with exceptions
The license lasts for as long as your content is protected by intellectual property rights; removing content does not by itself end it. If you remove covered content from Google's services, Google's systems will stop making it publicly available within a reasonable amount of time. Two exceptions: content you already shared with others may persist, for example a photo a friend copied or reshared can remain in the friend's Google Account; and if you made the content available through other companies' services, search engines, including Google Search, may continue to find and display it.
Supporting quotations
This license lasts for as long as your content is protected by intellectual property rights.
If you remove from our services any content that’s covered by this license, then our systems will stop making that content publicly available in a reasonable amount of time. There are two exceptions:
If you already shared your content with others before removing it.
then that photo may continue to appear in your friend’s Google Account even after you remove it from your Google Account.
If you make your content available through other companies’ services, it’s possible that search engines, including Google Search, will continue to find and display your content as part of their search results.
Qualifications & exceptions
- The commitment is to stop public availability; the terms here do not say when removed content is deleted from Google's systems.
Not stated here
- “A reasonable amount of time” is not defined.
- Deletion and retention of removed content are not described in these terms; the Privacy Policy is not supplied.