[thezilch]

Shouldn't this worry you about ANY email service; even those that you are 100% in control? Backup important data to separate services; have separate services to read this data; do it often, including the read -- make sure your backups work.

[machrider]

Yes, but the specific problem with Google is they have practically zero customer support. There is no one you can call to get help, and they apparently feel no obligation to respond to problems in a timely fashion.

[Drbble]

If a 100K people, an insanely huge number, experienced crippling Gmail failure, that is roughly a 0.1% chance that it would affect you on your lifetime. Avoiding Gmail for this is like avoiding planes and cars and houses because you saw on the news that one blew up somewhere.

[terinjokes]

Haven't checked my backups in probably a year or more. Still going strong, and still readable. Thanks for the reminder.

For everyone else, I'm using backupify.com to backup my Gmail and Google Contacts (and sent tweets, for some reason…)