Banning by Google as a single point of failure seems less likely than the single points of failure in ordinary alternatives to Gmail.
For example, I relied on backing up Thunderbird profiles as an email archive for many many years. Based on my years of experience the probability that my old spinning disks in the box in the closet are unreadable is higher than the probability that I will get banned by Google.
Google hardware is more reliable than mine. Google's algorithms are more reliable than me. That's me of course, not you and your mileage can and will vary.
If you only use it to receive email, your chances of being banned are probably very low.
If you are an active YouTuber, back up every photo to Google Photos, rely on Google Drive for heavy collaboration, and publish an app, your chances of being banned should be much higher, and increase with each Google service you use.
But statistically ordinary people are not active Youtubers, don’t heavily collaborate through drive, and don’t publish apps.
And statistically, I would expect a vast preponderance of Google bans are justified by the specifics of the “it depends.”
From a risk perspective, it is highly beneficial to limit the use of Google services to the really important things without which life online is very uncomfortable.
That would probably be identity/Gmail, Play Store access, Pay, and maybe Drive.
For almost all other major risk vectors (especially anything where you would publish content), it is just an obvious and dreadful uncertainty with little data to make a proper case. It's just smart to hedge against Googles all-or-nothing-ban attitude by using a multitude of service providers.
My grandfather digitized all of his family photo negatives (thousands), and wanted to upload them to Google Photos, which would have been an awful idea, given the huge differences in tolerance of nudity between Germany in the 50s to 80s and the US today.
I once bought a device through the Google Store, and Google said they'd send me a box to return my old device. For sending back my old device, Google was going to give me some money (as a discount for buying a new device).
The box never arrived and I asked Google Store support about it twice. I didn't dare ask a third time because, after all, it's Google. It's just not worth $140 to look like someone who might be a scammer, and I felt throughout the conversation that the other side seemed to see it that way. I would have insisted on the return box if I had bought it at Saturn or MediaMarkt, because what would they do if they don't like me? Power matters.
Here it depends too.
The devil has been in the details for the vast majority of “google banned me” [1] stories I have read…
When there are details.
The hypothetical case of your grandfather’s photos would be an example of Google acting reasonably, correctly, and in good faith. The devil in the details matters.
[1] or “PayPal froze my funds,” “Amazon kicked me off the platform,” etc.
In terms of principles I completely agree. I don’t want to have that sword perpetually dangling above my account. But I suspect we’re practically just worried about being struck by lightning.
This is a great point. People often act as the other providers are 100 percent reliable without any numbers to back it up. Grass is always greener on the other side. To be fair, Google’s customer service is non-existent though.
[1] https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/40695?hl=en#zippy....
For email I went with FastMail.
The most tedious bit of the switch is updating all accounts, but if you use 1Password at least you have a list of them. Many sites have issues around changing your email and on some it’s even impossible (literally have to create a new account instead)
You can keep your old gmail account around with forwarding on to catch any stragglers.
There are a few companies that continue to email my old one despite me having updated my email (Microsoft/xbox is particularly bad about this), some just send me the privacy policy email each year which I’m guessing is tracked in a separate mailchimp or something that I can’t unsubscribe from.
For some this is even after using CCPA to try to have them delete profile content, probably only 80% of sites are willing or able to comply.
Closest you can get is thunderbird + K9 and it doesn't allow snoozing email on phone, which is a hard requirement for me