[corkill]

You can use https://www.google.com/takeout/ to see and download a lot of the data you have in Googles services.

In the dashboard all the options are down the bottom to delete all your info etc.

[sbarre]

Darn I was hoping Gmail was in that list. Purely out of curiosity I'd love to download the 20,000 messages I have in there to do some analysis..

[dnlk]

Gmail is not in that list, because they have IMAP access (http://www.dataliberation.org/google/gmail).

You can just setup your account in for example OSX Mail, after synchronizing your messages will be in ~/Library/Mail (albeit not in a really nice folder structure like pure mbox or maildir, but you should be able to convert them without much hassle). Or you could use offlineimap (http://www.offlineimap.org), which gives you an IMAP dump/backup of your messages (in maildir format if I'm not mistaken). That said, the possibilities of getting your mail from IMAP are almost endless, just choose whatever suits you.

Btw, keeping 20000 mails just about anywhere might be convenient, but I really wonder what for (to clarify, I have maybe 300 mails right now on my own server and I regularly dump old stuff, while dumping for example registration mails right away due to security reasons)?

[sbarre]

Thanks for pointing out the IMAP approach. I use IMAP on my phone but never really considered using it download all my mail.

I'll give offlineimap.org a look..

To answer your other question, I have 20k emails because Gmail doesn't delete by default, so I just archive as I go..

I'm a zero-inbox type so I use labels and searching a lot. Those 20k emails are surprisingly well organized..

[a_a_r_o_n]

I used offlineimap when I moved from gmail, worked fine.

[mseebach]

You don't need it to be in the list. Just use IMAP to download your messages.

[buster]

Nothing easier then to fetch all mails over imap

[jonknee]

http://www.yippiemove.com/ is pretty good at doing stuff like this. Costs a little bit, but if you figure the time savings into the equation it's an easy sell.