The news had been in the air for some time but now it’s official: Google Archive Albums will be closed definitely next July 19th. The company made its decision known in an in-service notice. The pop-up that suddenly appears reads the following:
Album Archive will no longer be available. The photos and videos you view here will no longer be available after July 19, 2023. You can use Takeout to download items before this date.
Users who have recently accessed the service should have received an email indicating the contents that will be deleted. These include small thumbnail photos as well as comments and album likes. The latest Hangouts data will also be deleted as the url service has been replaced by Google Chat lately.
Google Album Archive closes July 19, how to view and manage content
The question that customers of the service are now asking themselves is legitimate: what will happen to all the contents in the archive? Officially starting July 20, 2023, users will be able to use other Google products to manage and view all the content that was previously present in the Album Archive.
For image content management, the company suggests Bloggerwhile for managing and viewing current and past profile photos, here Account Google.
In case users should worry that they won’t be able to view and manage photo albums anymore, that’s no problem: it will be Google Photo to provide in the best possible way. As for instead Hangouts and its attachments, users will be able to download them with Takeout.
It should be remembered that Hangouts has brought the upgrade back to Google Chatso some of its attachments may also be available there.
Users who want more clarification on the matter can refer to the official support page where all the useful information has been provided.