A cautionary tale about losing access to your Google account, and the difficulty in doing anything about it.
Not that this is a Google-specific thing. Other free email/web services (Yahoo, MSN Live / Hotmail, etc.) can have the same problem. And if you keep everything on your own machine, you not only lose the convenience of global access, but you can get screwed unless you (a) make regular backups (b) stored offsite (c) of applications and data in non-proprietary formats (i.e., not dependent on any particular custom application that may become unsupported at the whim of a publisher).
This actually occurred to me recently. Life would have been so much easier in rebuilding Jim & Ginger’s computer if their mail, photo albums, etc., were all online (e.g., Gmail and Picassa, etc.). On the other hand, as the linked story shows, there are risks in that approach.
At any rate, some lessons learned from the story:
1. Don’t entangle personal and business accounts. If the business side (your job) goes away, you may have problems.
2. Try and make backups of whatever data you put online. Keep all those photo files you uploaded to Flickr or Picassa. Or have them mirrored somewhere else.
3. If your “life” depends on it, consider going a pay route rather than a free one, if only because it’s marginally more likely you’ll have a contact number you can go to in case of problems.
4. There’s no such thing as a free lunch or a trouble-free life. Plan for the worst.
I think about this a lot, and it is one reason I keep some things local, other things online. But I’m aware in both cases that I’m gambling.
Heck, even keeping it all on paper isn’t perfect. Flood, fire … nothing lasts forever.