Google is rolling out a significant change to Google Chat that could impact users who communicate with work or school accounts from their personal Google accounts. The change, taking effect May 1, 2025, alters who controls the conversation history—and you may lose access to messages unless you act now.
What’s Changing in Google Chat?
Currently, if you’re chatting with someone using a Google Workspace (school or work) account, and you’re using a personal Gmail account, you can see the full conversation history. That will no longer be guaranteed after May 1.
Google is updating its data retention rules to allow organizations (like employers and schools) to apply their own message deletion policies. If they’ve set up an automatic deletion window—say 30 or 90 days—then messages from conversations started by them will be deleted from both sides of the conversation, including from your personal Chat interface.
This change applies to:
-
New and existing messages
-
Conversations started by work or school accounts
-
One-on-one and group chats
It does not apply to:
-
Conversations you started
-
Chats between two personal Google accounts
You can determine who started the chat by scrolling to the top of the conversation in Google Chat.
What You Need to Do Before May 1
If you want to retain copies of your conversations with people using work or school accounts, you must take action before May 1, 2025.
-
Visit Google Takeout:
This is where you can download your Google Chat data—including messages that may no longer be visible after May 1. -
Select Google Chat:
When prompted in Google Takeout, ensure “Google Chat” is selected as the data you want to export. -
Download Before February 1, 2026:
Deleted messages will still be available via Google Takeout until this date—but don’t wait, as data may become inaccessible in the Chat interface as early as May 1.
Why This Matters
This change gives schools and employers the ability to enforce their own data retention policies on conversations that involve outside participants—like you. It introduces a new layer of control over message visibility and retention that may impact your access to important conversations, files, or context if you rely on Google Chat for professional or academic collaboration.
Here’s the Full Text of the Email Google Is Sending:
We’re writing to inform you of an upcoming change to how conversation history is saved in Google Chat.
Today, when you have a Chat conversation from a personal Google account with someone using Google Chat for school or work, you can see your entire conversation history.
Starting on May 1, 2025, that will change. After that date, work or school accounts will control the deletion of messages for conversations started by their users. If the organization has a policy that messages are deleted after a certain period of time, those messages will be deleted from the conversation for both participants, based on the retention policy of the school or work account. This change will apply to all new and existing messages. It will not apply to conversations you created or to conversations you have with other people that use Chat with a personal Google account. You can see who created the conversation by scrolling to the top of the conversation.
Learn more about message history for conversations with work or school accounts.
To download a copy of your Chat data, visit takeout.google.com. All messages, including those you can no longer see in the Chat user interface after May 1, 2025, will continue to be available through Google Takeout until February 1, 2026.
If you’re using Google Chat to talk with anyone at a school or workplace, you may lose visibility of your chat history starting May 1. Export your messages now to avoid surprises.
