A way to delete your Google Wave account?

For those trying to leave Google Wave—and who have had no satisfaction whatsoever from the Google forums (what a surprise)—there might be one way.
   There are quite a few reasons people want to leave Wave. One netizen had this concern: ‘It appears I have been linked to former associates who I have kept in my contacts list in case I need to take legal action against them; I want nothing to do with them. I am concerned now that I am going to appear in the Wave contacts of everyone in my contacts list—this is a nightmare scenario. This is a serious breach of my privacy.’
   Others have found total strangers among their Wave followers who are not part of their Gmail contacts’ list or any others. Still others have found hackers and abusers who are writing extensions and other things to crash their accounts—something that has happened as early as October 2009.
   With me, I can’t find much reason to keep Wave if I am de-Googling my life right now—it’s one service too many, and I am increasingly Google-sceptic these days. I also don’t like the fact that a brand-new email account at googlewave.com has been set up for me without my consent (this probably accounts for the appearance of “strangers” in people’s Google Wave accounts).
   Today, Google announced that s. 11.1 would change insofar as its terms and conditions for Wave are concerned. It now reads, just for this service (and does not appear on the site-wide terms and conditions linked from your Google account settings, and to date, there is no separate set of terms governing Wave):

Google does not claim any ownership in any of the content, including any text, data, information, images, photographs, music, sound, video, or other material, that you upload, transmit or store in your Google Wave account. You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold to Content which you submit, post or display on or through the Service. By submitting, posting or displaying the Content, you give Google a worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through the Service for the sole purpose of enabling Google to provide you with the Service in accordance with its Privacy Policy.

   Therefore, I wrote to Google’s Privacy Policy people saying I disagreed with the above change, and would they please cancel my Wave account?
   You can find a link to the Privacy Policy here. There’s a further link from there to a form which goes to the Privacy Matters’ department.
   I concluded the email with this paragraph:

Please be advised that I do not accept this change to our agreement insofar as my Google Wave usage is concerned, and request that my Google Wave account be terminated. However, please retain my other Google products until further notice.

   You never know, it might work. It’s the only area where there still seems to be a form that’s read by human beings at Google.
   I take no responsibility for others’ use of this information—it’s provided simply as a chronicle of what I’m trying. I would rather be Wave-free immediately than wait the nine months that Google claims a cancellation would take. (That’s right: officially, if you want to leave Wave, you have to be inactive for nine months, and then Google might cancel your account. No word on whether you also lose your googlewave.com email account.) I had hoped it could be done in nine seconds by surfing to a page, clicking ‘Cancel’ and having some processing time.

In related news, you now need three entries in your Google profile in order to be listed in search results. This is an increase of one: over the weekend, you only required two.

PS.: A month later, I can report that the legal route does not work.—JY


You may also like




2 thoughts on “A way to delete your Google Wave account?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *