This. It lies as one of at least two root problems with the Internet as currently conceived and implemented. I have heard horror stories of people loosing entire collections of digital works that they paid for because of a violation of terms of service in a completely unrelated area. Could you imagine loosing all your Google Play purchases because of a copyright dispute on a single blog post?

People should diversify their accounts. If one is closed for whatever reason it won't impact their entire digital life.

That's easier said than done.

The reason for all this cloud stuff is simplicity! Why have two services when Google/Apple/Other combines all your stuff into one.

Almost no one will frequently use multiple services like iTunes and Google Play, e.g. you aren't going to buy a movie from iTunes then buy the same one from Google Play just in case Apple pull the rug out from under you.

Same with email: I have a few addresses but my primary one (99% of the time) is tied to outlook.com.

We have allowed it to happen: We own nothing these days, we just rent stuff.

Same with email: I have a few addresses but my primary one (99% of the time) is tied to outlook.com

Open a Gmail account and get it to collect all your email from outlook.com. Also, set up mail forwarding so all your outlook.com email goes to Gmail. (Third backup: a desktop email client.)

I do this the other way round: I use Gmail as my main email address (with my own domain name) with everything forwarded to outlook.com, where sweep makes it really easy to clean up.

It takes a small amount of effort, but it stops me from worrying quite so much about the catastrophic effect of having more than a decade of Gmail deleted...

Sounds fairly straightforward... for guys like us!

My mum or my sister couldn't do any of that stuff as they wouldn't know where to start.

As it happens, I use Outlook client on my laptop and desktop machines so I have a local copy of my emails should it all go to hell but I could still lose my primary email address.

As for Gmail... I would rather swallow my tongue than let them near my emails (not saying much considering I use Microsoft at the moment, I know) :)

Moral of this story:

1) Always, always, always have backups.

2) If you do not host it yourself, on hardware you own and control, then you are at the mercy of the corporate overlord that does own and control the hardware you are borrowing.

^ This x 1000

I feel for the guy, I do, since I have been there myself: I learned the hard way a few years back when my only drive died :(

I recently took stock of my backup situation and found it lacking so I changed it:

Working data on 2 x 3TB RAID1 WD Reds

Sync'd to my laptop via OneDrive (changing as I type this to Sync.com - getting rid of OneDrive)

Backups nightly to WD NAS downstairs

Monthly backups to USB drive that goes almost everywhere with me.

Not perfect as Sync.com is my only offsite but I am confident that anything short of a direct nuclear strike should be salvageable.

Edit: Clarity and formatting

The backups to USB drive are crucial since a bug could wipe out your synced files. If not already, I suggest you encrypt it, especially since you take it around with you.

On a happier note, he's in Europe, and he's filing a lawsuit. If there's enough pressure on Google, they might be a little less trigger-happy with deletions (lock the blog and set it so only the owner can view it).

This may be wishful thinking, and it probably hurts more when your @gmail.com is disabled.

Google depends on it's bots to pull the trigger and there is absolutely no way to contest it. I have mentioned before on HN to a guy who said that he had "nothing to fear about Google" that if & when google brings down it's ban hammer then you are kicked out of google search, gmail, drive, docs, adwords, adsense and everything you consider holy.

All your documents are gone one fine morning when you wake up. Worst is you sometimes have no idea why and it's a lifetime ban

I'm pretty sure the ToS allows Google to close an account for any reason they see fit. I would not place a lot of trust in a lawsuit in this case myself.

There's something very scary about account closures like these and the lack of appeal opportunity. In general Google's support is abysmal, but I can somewhat see how providing support for all free users would be extremely expensive.

However to wake up one day and find that everything you trusted Google to keep safe is now locked away from you without any avenue of reaching a human to appeal, or even just to get a copy of your data is quite scary.