Inbox looks to be going the other direction, though. For example, they are now making it harder for you to delete e-mails. All are archived by default. Why do you think that is? Because they want to mine them for as long a possible. Unfortunately, for Americans, it also means that after 180 days the US government can get access to them without a warrant (according to the outdated ECPA).
> Inbox looks to be going the other direction, though. For example, they are now making it harder for you to delete e-mails. All are archived by default
This isn't "going the other direction". "archiving by default" has literally been the case in gmail since it came out in 2004. And, like in gmail, the Inbox trash button is still right there, and Ctrl/Cmd-3 still trashes it.
> Unfortunately, for Americans, it also means that after 180 days the US government can get access to them without a warrant (according to the outdated ECPA).
The threat of someone looking through ancient emails aside, there really is no reason not to store old messages forever. They're incredibly small, and you never know when you'll want to reference an old discussion because someone comes back into your life.
In the bad old days before archiving, people got in the habit of deleting emails because there was no better way to get them out of the inbox.
How long ago is "old days" to you? I've got every single email (other than junk mail) I've sent or received since 1999. I use Outlook, and everything older than 30 days gets archived into a local .PST file. Couldn't be easier.
