Google encourages users to plan for "digital afterlife"

Google announced last week the launch of the "Inactive Account Manager," which lets users set an amount of time after which all of their Google Account's data will be deleted after a period of inactivity. The tool allows you to decide "what you want done with your digital assets when you die or can no longer use your account."

Here's a description of the service:

[Y]ou can choose to have your data deleted — after three, six, nine or 12 months of inactivity. Or you can select trusted contacts to receive data from some or all of the following services: +1s; Blogger; Contacts and Circles; Drive; Gmail; Google+ Profiles, Pages and Streams; Picasa Web Albums; Google Voice and YouTube. Before our systems take any action, we’ll first warn you by sending a text message to your cellphone and email to the secondary address you’ve provided.

Visit the Inactive Account Manager to set it up.