I guess I never really "trusted" Google as much as I trust most (rich and leading) nation states to handle my identity trustfully, providing a suitable mechanism (this is often quite expensive) for dealing with clerical or automatic mistakes in a mostly decent way, etc.
I've been a Gmail user since 2004 and have since (like everyone else, more or less) tied my online life around it.
I don't care that much for backups (honestly, I don't store that much super memorable data in the google cloud - I have a separate, offline backup system for that stuff.)
What I do care for is the availability of my personal gmail as a fallback authentication mechanism for these hundreds of online services I've signed up for during the past years.
I would recommend anyone who uses Chrome and its password manager to use the recipe at https://github.com/megmage/chrome-export-passwords to get a list of sites and corresponding passwords. I just printed mine out (all eleven pages). Don't bother storing it on a local drive - it's just another fat target to be stolen.
Up next is going through all those services to see which is critical or non-critical, and how I can get into them if I no longer have access to my primary gmail address. Facebook is probably a big one for most people. (Annoyingly - I tried to add my mobile phone number to FB recently, but at a first attempt I couldn't get it to just be a rescue number, rather than a rescue + spam messages via sms number.)
Some services allow multiple email addresses - for that I guess something like Microsoft's free outlook.com service could be suitable.
I'm also considering removing my credit card details from my Google Account. Seems like you're much more likely to be a target of their automated policing if there's actual money involved. (If they don't want stuff like this to happen, maybe they should invest a little more in that dirty annoying customer management area.)
I've been a Gmail user since 2004 and have since (like everyone else, more or less) tied my online life around it. I don't care that much for backups (honestly, I don't store that much super memorable data in the google cloud - I have a separate, offline backup system for that stuff.)
What I do care for is the availability of my personal gmail as a fallback authentication mechanism for these hundreds of online services I've signed up for during the past years. I would recommend anyone who uses Chrome and its password manager to use the recipe at https://github.com/megmage/chrome-export-passwords to get a list of sites and corresponding passwords. I just printed mine out (all eleven pages). Don't bother storing it on a local drive - it's just another fat target to be stolen.
Up next is going through all those services to see which is critical or non-critical, and how I can get into them if I no longer have access to my primary gmail address. Facebook is probably a big one for most people. (Annoyingly - I tried to add my mobile phone number to FB recently, but at a first attempt I couldn't get it to just be a rescue number, rather than a rescue + spam messages via sms number.)
Some services allow multiple email addresses - for that I guess something like Microsoft's free outlook.com service could be suitable.
I'm also considering removing my credit card details from my Google Account. Seems like you're much more likely to be a target of their automated policing if there's actual money involved. (If they don't want stuff like this to happen, maybe they should invest a little more in that dirty annoying customer management area.)