[toocool]

Thanks for your reply.

That is a possibility, I might be naive but I consider it on the very unlikely side. What I would imagine in that case is that I would reset the important other accounts such as the bank ones by showing up in some physical office with my passport, or something similar, while waiting to solve the situation with Google.

What alternatives would you suggest? Spreading the accounts over different email addresses? Letting aside the privacy issue, to be honest I don't think there is another mail provider that I'd trust better than Google from a security point of view.

[philiphodgen]

Yes I would hedge my bets.

I have seen businesses die because they only had one bank. You and I have both seen, from time to time, people complaining that something went wrong with a Google account with no apparent way to obtain recourse.

Always have a backup. And a contingency plan in case the backup plan fails.

I'm with you on LastPass. I am utterly reliant on it, and it bothers me greatly. I have hedged my bets a bit by backing things up with 1Password. But what a collosal pain in the ass that is. Friction leads to sloth, and sloth leads to system failure.

[BjoernKW]

A simple alternative would be using an existing email address on a domain you own as a POP3 account within GMail. That way you get all the benefit of GMail without being dependent on it in case something at Google goes awry.

[j_s]

Bare minimum: regularly scheduled 'take out' backups.

https://www.google.com/settings/takeout

There are lots of open source utilities to work with the data, but most are one-offs. Here's one that didn't appear to be:

https://github.com/jay0lee/got-your-back/wiki

[jklein11]

You could set up for gmail with a custom domain. That way you get all of the benefits of hosting with google but if they decide to lock your account for some reason you have a back out strategy