Agreed. In the mean time I keep my Google accounts backed up on a daily basis to try to limit the damage.
- Thunderbird opens at 4 AM on a cron job, closed at 5 AM (use nircmd on Windows to do a graceful shutdown), data files backed up Jottacloud at 5:15 AM. Thunderbird automatically syncs via IMAP.
- Google calendar via Powershell equivalent of wget/curl, also scheduled and backed up off site.
- Google Photos is currently impossible to backup automatically.
This article made me look into this again, there are in fact ways to backup Google Photos.
Rclone claims to be able to do it, will test later. There is also gphotos-sync.
For Google Drive you can use the official sync client or you can use something like Duplicati. Google Drive also backs up your Google Docs, although I'm not sure how useful the format they come in is. Need to check if LibreOffice can open them, certainly any scripts in Sheets won't work.
I don't think there is an automatic solution for Maps a
The problem is really not just the data though. The issue Google is also your identity provider.
Even if you are not using google authentication to log into other services, if you don't have your password you might not be able to recover those accounts at all if you lose your @gmail address.
Its one of the reason I bought my own domain even though I use Google for mail. At least I can point my MX back to my own mail server or someone other provider if Google ever decides to make gmail/domains go away or kicks me off. Backing up my mail and other data itself is really the least bad part of potentially getting frozen out of Google,
I thought Google Photos was a backup? Ie, picture is on your phone, then backed up to the cloud, but the photos are still on your phone. Otherwise how would you show those photos to anyone? "Here, have a look at the cutest pictures of my grandkids! Hold on,... hold on... says it's downloading... this is going to be great... Marge, where are you going?"
You can keep the photos on your phone but you can also opt to delete local copies of older ones to free up space. My original Pixel XL was only 32GB so I did that.
I was going to say "why not back them up", but I think some people mistakenly think Google is a backup. Google can't even properly keep their own applications from going away and vanishing.
My question is why? Why is your Google account your main data repository? If you read their terms of service there is nothing in it for you. People may find value in Google services as a backup but as a main personal repository for your data, it just doesn't make any sense.
Time to declare Google a utility (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we have reached the point where Google should be regulated as a utility. A utility can just shut down your services at will.
Re:Time to declare Google a utility (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. In the mean time I keep my Google accounts backed up on a daily basis to try to limit the damage.
- Thunderbird opens at 4 AM on a cron job, closed at 5 AM (use nircmd on Windows to do a graceful shutdown), data files backed up Jottacloud at 5:15 AM. Thunderbird automatically syncs via IMAP.
- Google calendar via Powershell equivalent of wget/curl, also scheduled and backed up off site.
- Google Photos is currently impossible to backup automatically.
Re: (Score:3)
This article made me look into this again, there are in fact ways to backup Google Photos.
Rclone claims to be able to do it, will test later. There is also gphotos-sync.
For Google Drive you can use the official sync client or you can use something like Duplicati. Google Drive also backs up your Google Docs, although I'm not sure how useful the format they come in is. Need to check if LibreOffice can open them, certainly any scripts in Sheets won't work.
I don't think there is an automatic solution for Maps a
Re:Time to declare Google a utility (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is really not just the data though. The issue Google is also your identity provider.
Even if you are not using google authentication to log into other services, if you don't have your password you might not be able to recover those accounts at all if you lose your @gmail address.
Its one of the reason I bought my own domain even though I use Google for mail. At least I can point my MX back to my own mail server or someone other provider if Google ever decides to make gmail/domains go away or kicks me off. Backing up my mail and other data itself is really the least bad part of potentially getting frozen out of Google,
Re: (Score:2)
I thought Google Photos was a backup? Ie, picture is on your phone, then backed up to the cloud, but the photos are still on your phone. Otherwise how would you show those photos to anyone? "Here, have a look at the cutest pictures of my grandkids! Hold on, ... hold on... says it's downloading... this is going to be great... Marge, where are you going?"
Re: (Score:2)
You can keep the photos on your phone but you can also opt to delete local copies of older ones to free up space. My original Pixel XL was only 32GB so I did that.
Re: (Score:2)
I was going to say "why not back them up", but I think some people mistakenly think Google is a backup. Google can't even properly keep their own applications from going away and vanishing.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
My question is why? Why is your Google account your main data repository? If you read their terms of service there is nothing in it for you. People may find value in Google services as a backup but as a main personal repository for your data, it just doesn't make any sense.
Re: (Score:2)
Gmail is actually good. Best search function, saves me doing any organisation. Adequate in other areas.
Google photos is good. I can search for things like "cat" or "PCB" and the image recognition actually works.
Google Docs is decent, in particular having portable spreadsheets I can work on from anywhere, even my phone, is really handy.