[adonovan]

There were many awful stories of parents who'd created email accounts for their children at birth, and filled them with years of memories and photos, only for Google to lock the account without recourse when they later discovered an age inconsistency. When I worked at Google, I asked the product lead for Gmail why we took such a Draconian step, and they expressed regret but said the COPPA law left them with very little room to maneuver.

[gambiting]

Which is of course absolute nonsense from technical point of view. Google could have just provided a zipped archive of the entire account to a parent or legal guardian after verification of ID. But that means work and work which doesn't bring in any money, so why do it at all.

[cseleborg]

Ironically, this was exactly the theme of Google's "Dear Sophie" ad [1] a few years ago.

[1] https://youtu.be/zhPklt9nYas

[hammyhavoc]

Years of yet more unread email sounds like the stuff of nightmares.