I like the products google makes, but their complete refusal to have any sort of customer service makes me hesitant to rely on them for anything beyond what I trust them with now.
On a related note, I'm actually bummed that iCloud is free. I felt better about access to my data when I was paying yearly for MobileMe, and in fact started recently experiencing some issues getting Mail in Snow Leopard to recognize my iCloud account and finally ended up just upgrading to Lion to resolve the issue. (Yes, the $30 OS upgrade is cheaper than the $99 MobileMe cost, and I'm glad I upgraded because I'm enjoying using Lion, but I dislike how easy it is for Apple to say now that it's a free service they're free to stop supporting anything that isn't the latest iDevice or version of their OS if things happen to work out that way.)
In other words, that what we did get, is pretty useless.
The good news is that the odds are on your side. Most people do not, of course, get their account shut down willy-nilly. But if it happens you're pretty much out of luck.
I moved my email over to Fastmail.fm, a subscription email service, around 8 months ago. They've been in the business since 1999 and seem to be pretty reliable. The web interface and price obviously doesn't compare to Gmail, but all the other features are there.
Or: use Google Apps for Domains, so that you can easily switch to another mail service when necessary, and have one machine make a backup with offlineimap.
Seriously, Gmail is free, you really can't complain about something that's free (yes, I know you "pay" by looking at ads, but when you can upgrade to the "premium" service for $50, never have to look at another ad again and get 24/7 phone support, why wouldn't you?)
Their new web interface currently in beta at https://beta.fastmail.fm/ is very nice. I've been using it (the new interface) for few months and don't feel like I want to go back to Gmail at all. (Then again I don't use labels in Gmail, so your mileage may vary.)
And today, you tell me to go to beta.fastmail.fm ... a site that looks like this: http://o7.no/IPvfHo
Note broken images, missing Latest News, and they can't even spell Fastmail correctly (see below "Login to your account"). This does not inspire confidence.
[Off topic: I think FastMail support system is pretty lame; despite being an email service, the only way to contact their support is via... web interface. They have few weird quirk like this but it's not something I couldn't live with.]
https://beta.fastmail.fm/pages/fastmail/images/fmlogo_horiz_...
vs.
https://fastmail.fm/pages/fastmail/images/fmlogo_horiz_320.p...
Gmail should let you download all emails into an email client, but the point people are making about losing access to the address itself remains very valid.
Would be interesting to know if anyone has ever lost access to their account and filed suit in an attempt to get it back. Current MegaUpload case is a bit different, but related.
People need to think things through before uploading all of their stuff to "the cloud." The network is a transmission medium, not a place to keep things. If you own a connected server, that's one thing. But why trust all of your data to some third party who can pull the plug on a whim and leave you with no recourse?
Here's Microsoft's moronic account-recovery procedure for an inexplicably blocked Hotmail account. It's IMPOSSIBLE to follow the directions:
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5306/5773538918_fa4af1de42_b.j...
There is no such thing as a safe system with one point of failure. No matter what medium you use to store data, you must always have a backup. It's the only way to be sure.
(Personally, I pay the $5 a month for a Google Apps account. It's convenient to let Google host my email, but if something goes wrong, I can always change my MX record and start collecting my own incoming mail again. And, I don't have to block ads anymore :)
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/03/godaddy-silence
In support of your (and my) point: Local storage is now dirt-cheap, small in size, and spacious. Exactly the WRONG time to start turning your data over to someone else to store "in the cloud."
The plug computer is a Sheeva plug. There is a low power WD USB 1 TB drive connected, power consumption in idle is <5 W.
[You may be able to allow < 13 year olds with parent's permission, but most sites probably feel that it's too much effort/risk to do that.]
It has happened to me - I lost everything, calendar, email, g+ (which I had not ever updated and had no ToS violations on), absolutely everything.
In the next two days I googled (yes, I did) for answers while receiving automated messages that seemed to indicate I was never getting my accounts back (submitted the form they asked me to, but nothing came of it).
I lost my appointments, contacts, and had business people doubt my veracity, as I'd just given my gmail to several new contacts and their initial emails all bounced.
If I hadn't had multiple friends inside of google I might never have gotten my accounts back, and I heard they weren't even sure what exactly happened other than a confluence of events. I then learned how very very common it is to lose a google account and never know why, and never be able get back anything on them (family pictures, phone numbers stored in contact lists...)
I'm now mostly divested from google and the things I still have there I now have backups and redundancies for.
And she had all of her digital life in there.
She made for herself another Gmail account which she has safeguarded a lot more, but it's still chilling to know that you have no recourse.
Gmail is so convenient, that it's hard not to use it, but I'd pay for customer service.
So pay for it? I'm not saying that it's right for Google to do this, but they do offer that option. With a Google Apps subscription, you get support.
Generally, if it can't be implemented by an algorithm, Google's not going to do it, ever.
e.g. "24/7 Support" meant I was free to sent them an e-mail anytime, day or night. Or I could call the 800 line and leave a message ("Calls are usually returned within two business days!").
When I did get through this way, I had to run a gauntlet to convince the asshole (and he was an asshole) that I'd exhausted every imaginable self service option before having the audacity to call for help directly - even though this was the exact service I was paying for.
Seriously, you'd think I'd called 911 to report that I was running out of milk and eggs. In reality, my accounts had vanished completely. Business accounts, I might add. Not that it mattered to Google.
Like an earlier commenter noted - if you use Google for anything that matters, you'll probably be okay. After all, the odds are in your favor. But if you do get screwed, you get screwed completely, suddenly, and without warning. And that's true of customers and users alike.
a PAYING customer of gmail lost his account.
but still, he is having problem with his account used for gmail, which he pays.
why does he have to pay yet another product to have support for the one he is having problem with?
do you have to buy a 2liter coke to be able to complain that they delivered the wrong toppings in your pizza? makes no sense.
This is the story we hear again and again - you CAN get customer service from Google if you have contacts inside or you can raise a big stink at some forum that Googlers read.
The black box google currently presents makes me uninterested in trusting them, since to do so would present a lot of risk (losing my email) with very little reward (a sort-of-better facebook clone).