Google has started notifying customers that Checks, its privacy compliance platform for app and AI developers, is being discontinued. The service will be fully shut down at the end of September 2026. If your team relies on Checks for privacy reports, code compliance scanning, or AI safety evaluations, you have roughly six weeks to plan a migration and secure your data.
Here is what the announcement says, what Checks actually did, and what the shutdown tells us about where Google thinks compliance tooling is going.
What the announcement says
On August 19, 2026, Google sent a "Deprecation of the Checks product" email to every active Checks account. The key facts from the message:
- The deprecation timeline officially began on August 17, 2026.
- The final sunset of the service is scheduled for the end of September 2026.
- During the wind-down period, new user registrations and app uploads are disabled.
- Feature access may be limited as the shutdown proceeds.
- Accounts and all associated data will be automatically deleted once the service shuts down, unless you request earlier deletion.
- You can request immediate deletion of your account and data by emailing checks-support@google.com and including your Checks account number.
At the time of writing, the public Checks website and documentation are still online, but they have not been updated with a deprecation banner. Customers are learning about this from the email itself, which is a reminder to keep an eye on service announcements from any vendor that holds your compliance data.
What Checks was
Checks had an unusual path for a Google product. It was first incubated in Area 120, Google's in-house incubator, before officially joining Google in May 2023. It then launched in General Availability at Google I/O in May 2024, a milestone the team celebrated in its own blog at the time.
The product's stated mission was to simplify privacy compliance and reduce risk for digital product creators. By the end, it covered three main areas:
- App Compliance: automated privacy checks for Android and iOS apps, including SDK data-flow analysis that flagged when user data was collected or shared in ways that could create regulatory exposure.
- Code Compliance: scanning source code, including continuous integration pipelines, to catch privacy issues before release. The product's marketing showed it flagging personally identifiable identifiers flowing into analytics SDKs directly inside Java code.
- AI Safety: testing and evaluation tooling for generative AI features, aimed at teams that needed evidence that their models behaved within policy boundaries.
That last product line matters. Checks was one of the more accessible ways for a mid-sized team to get structured AI safety evaluations without building an internal red-teaming practice. Its disappearance removes a convenient option, not just a nice-to-have.
Why Google is killing it
The email gives an unusually candid reason. Google says that "as we enter the agentic era," the way developers approach compliance is shifting. With the rise of its agentic platforms, the email specifically names the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform; developers can now build bespoke compliance tools and customized AI agents that fit their specific organizational needs.
Read that carefully. Google is not claiming Checks failed in the market or that privacy compliance stopped mattering. The argument is that compliance tooling is becoming something developers assemble themselves on top of general-purpose agent platforms, rather than something they buy as a finished product.
That is a significant position, and it deserves scrutiny from two angles.
First, there is a real trend underneath the press-release language. Compliance work is heavy on repetitive evidence gathering: scanning data flows, mapping data sources to regulations, reviewing SDK behaviors, generating documentation. These are exactly the tasks current AI agents handle reasonably well, and a custom agent can be tuned to an organization's specific stack and risk appetite in a way a horizontal product cannot.
Second, the economics land differently depending on team size. A large enterprise with security engineers on staff can justify building a bespoke compliance agent on an enterprise platform. A five-person startup that used Checks precisely because it did not have those engineers now faces a build-it-yourself path with no off-the-shelf replacement of similar scope. Consolidation into platforms tends to squeeze the small teams hardest.
What the shutdown tells us
Beyond the immediate migration headache, the deprecation fits a pattern worth naming.
Google has a long history of sunsetting products, but Checks is a different category from the consumer graveyards of Google+ or Stadia. It was a paid, business-critical compliance tool holding customer data subject to retention obligations, and it lasted barely two years past General Availability. Teams that anchor their compliance evidence to any single vendor platform should take note: the half-life of "enterprise" tooling is not guaranteed by an SLA.
There is also a strategic signal here. Google is explicitly steering developer mindshare toward its agentic platforms, and it is willing to retire a functioning product line to reinforce that direction. Expect more of this. When a vendor tells you the future is agents building vertical tools on their horizontal platform, product roadmaps will follow that story, even for products with a loyal base.
A reasonable question to hold onto: if bespoke agents built on Gemini Enterprise are the replacement, who audits them? Checks offered a consistent, vendor-operated methodology that privacy teams could point to in assessments. A custom agent gives you flexibility, but the burden of proving your compliance tooling itself is sound moves onto you.
What you should do now
If you have an active Checks account, the practical checklist is short and time-boxed:
- Export your reports and evidence now. Do not wait for the final week of September. Historical compliance reports are often needed for audits long after the tool that generated them is gone, and Google has said all data will be deleted at shutdown.
- Inventory what you depended on. List which Checks outputs fed into your privacy programs, app store submissions, or AI safety documentation. Each one needs a new home, whether that is a competitor, an in-house script, or an agent-based workflow.
- Decide on your data. If you want your account and data deleted before the automatic purge, email checks-support@google.com with your Checks account number. If you are fine with automatic deletion at the end of September 2026, no action is needed.
- Review alternatives by category. Mobile app privacy scanning, code-level compliance scanning, and AI safety evaluation are three separate problems. You may not find one vendor that replaces all three, and splitting them up is normal.
- Watch the migration window. With registrations already closed and feature access possibly limited, a competitor trial that starts today may not behave the same next month. Move early.
Summary
- Google is discontinuing Checks, its privacy compliance platform for apps, code, and AI safety, with full shutdown at the end of September 2026.
- New registrations and app uploads are already disabled; remaining users should export their data before the automatic deletion at shutdown.
- Google's stated reason is the shift to the agentic era: developers can now build bespoke compliance tools on platforms like the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform.
- The move signals that Google is prioritizing its agentic platforms over standalone developer products, even ones less than two and a half years past General Availability.
- Small teams that relied on Checks as a turnkey option now face building or assembling their own compliance workflows earlier than they would have liked.
The tooling will be rebuilt, most likely by the teams that used it. The interesting part is watching whether agent-built compliance checks turn out to be more adaptable than the product they replace, or simply less accountable.
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