Google continues its server maintenance efforts and, after announcing the deletion of email accounts that don’t comply with the terms of use, the company is now informing users of the definitive closure of one of its photo album services.
Album Archive to disappear on July 19
Since last Friday, Google has been sending out emails warning of the imminent end of “Album Archive” on July 19, and recommending a few steps to back up images before they’re lost forever.
“You have received this email because you have recently accessed Album Archive or may have content visible in Album Archive,” explains Google’s email announcing the tool’s closure.
“As of July 19, 2023, Album Archive will no longer be available.”
“We recommend that you use Google Takeout to download a copy of your Album Archive data prior to this date.”
Google clarifies in the same email that the Album Archive function allows you to view and manage certain Google products, and that some of this content is only accessible in “Album Archive” and will be removed from July 19 :
- In rare cases, this may include image thumbnails, comments or album ratings.
- Some Google Hangouts data from album archives.
- Background images uploaded to Gmail’s theme selector before 2018.
How do you back up your data?
Google recommends backing up data with Google Takeout To avoid losing photos that may be valuable to users, or whose existence they may have forgotten somewhere on the Internet, Google recommends creating a copy of this data via Google Takeout.
In this way, when album archives are no longer available, it will still be possible to use these products to view and manage some of the content directly.
The album archive function consists of storing data from Blogger, Picasa and the old Hangouts, where thumbnails of images can be found. However, this function was abandoned with the creation of Google Photos.
It’s possible that little can be retrieved under these circumstances, but it doesn’t hurt to take a look to make sure.