In fact, google may be being told by the government to tell people that this data isn't being stored so people will be less concerned about it and not think it's being collected since many people know google collects data but may be naive as to the possibility that google is lying about the data being completely erased.
That’s fascinating, it sounds like the cost for Google to store, categorize, and disseminate this information is higher than the profit. Morals are unlikely to be relevant, after all. Or are they simply using devices as their storage medium?
The data has costs associated with it: they'll want to back it up, they need to migrate it when they change formats, they need to maintain the hardware it resides on.
And, as the article mentions, there are liabilities around law enforcement requests, costs due to data breaches, and regulatory requirements.
