[squarefoot]

Yes, being prepared is a lot better since apparently Google has a thing for terminating accounts and services without notice. It shouldn't happen with Gmail because so many people depend on it for other services, also for confirmation of email change with the bank for example, which would be impossible if the account has already been terminated, but I'd be on the safe side anyway. That's the reason I set up my Fastmail account so that it mirrors my Gmail one: every single mail I receive on Gmail is mirrored on Fastmail, so if something happens I can send a notice of the new address to my contacts, show Google the middle finger and move on without losing anything. The only annoyance is that until I keep the two accounts active, I'll receive two copies of the same message on my client (Claws Mail) but all it needs is firing up the function to delete duplicate messages every now and then.

Mirroring external mailboxes such as Gmail from Fastmail can be activated when creating a new account; so far it works really well.