I fully expect to someday lose access to my gmail account because I regularly delete cookies and I won't give them a phone number. If they won't accept a password as proof of ownership on an account, then the account will someday be dead.
Add the google account to an old android phone you don't use (maybe even an emulated android would work) and it skips all the verification stuff simply because it's on a phone. That way you can keep it logged in and change things even if you can't log in via a browser.
So the account is "dead" to you, but not necessarily to Google or at least not until they extract what they want from it (and have sold it to whoever).
It's data on their servers that they control, that no longer has a user. The data then can fall into any of the categories mentioned above, to include the possibility of transfer to 3rd party entities. That they may eventually delete it, is different from how they may have used it or to what entities they may have sent portions to.