[majewsky]

How is that compatible with legal requirements for deletion? I think that, at least in Germany, you can demand that a company delete all data associated with you, and the company has to comply with it.

(Whether German data protection law applies in Google's datacenters is a wholy different story though.)

[easychris]

It's not required in Germany either. The data protection law allows to "lock" data instead of really deleting it from all devices. And IMO that's the only sane solution to deletion requests.

Otherwise, any kind of backups would be unlawful for a company.

[toennisforst]

Though this requirement is moot even in Germany, as it is impossible for you to verify such a deletion.