Google Shuts Down One Users Entire Digital Existence

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There are quite a bit of cloud related services these days, numerous service offerings coming from numerous companies. Of course, these can be along the lines of the recently announced (and not yet available) iCloud from Apple and also from Google.

As many TFTS readers will realize, Google has their hands in just about everything. And its all web (cloud) based. Sure you can download your Gmail mail using a desktop mail client and you can make sure you have your Picasa photos also stored locally. But the question is this, how much trust are you putting into these services and perhaps the bigger question — how many people are actually taking preventative measures for that just in case type of incident.

If you ask me, Google has my email, voicemail and SMS messages, RSS subscriptions, images, music and probably more that I cannot think of quite so fast. In short, Google has become my go to. I trust Google, however I also make sure to do things like download my mail using the Apple Mail app every-so-often and I keep all my images stored locally. I also export my Reader subscriptions every time I make major changes. In terms of Google Voice, I have my SMS and Voicemail notifications come to my email so those are also backed up locally when I use Apple Mail.

That being said, here comes the kicker — your web based services can all go away. And go away in an instance, especially when they are all tied to one Google Account. While I take some precautions in terms of my data, I would still be lost if I lost it. Having to start all over again. Anyway, here is the sad story of one Google user who took advantage of the wide variety of Google services for many years to have them one day shut down. And shut down for a reason he cannot figure out, and a reason that he cannot get anyone to tell him.

The kicker here, his blog, where he would have ran to rant about this issue, was on Blogger — another Google service that was taken from him. And keeping to the every story has two sides, we are not going to say Google is right or wrong here, just take this as a lesson and hope everyone reading this will take the necessary precautions — just in case it happens to you.

So without further adieu, his story was posted on TwitLonger, which you can read the beginning below and then follow the “source” link at the bottom to read the conclusion…

Dear Google,

I would like to bring to your attention a few things before I disconnect permanently from all of your services.

On July 15 2011 you turned off my entire Google account. You had absolutely no reason to do this, despite your automated message telling me your system “perceived a violation.” I did not violate any Terms of Service, either Google’s or account specific ToS, and your refusal to provide me with any proof otherwise makes me absolutely certain of this. And I would like to bring to your attention how much damage your carelessness has done.

My Google account was tied to nearly every product Google has developed, meaning that I lost everything in those accounts as well. I was also in the process of consolidating everything into my one Google account. I had actually thought through this a few months ago and determined Google to be a trustworthy, dependable company. So I had imported all of my other email accounts, hotmail, yahoo, etc., into that one gmail account. I had spent roughly four months slowly consolidating my entire online presence, email accounts, banking info, student records, etc., into that one Google account, having determined it to be reliable.

That means in terms of information, approximately 7 years of correspondence, over 4,800 photographs and videos, my Google Voice messages, over 500 articles saved to my Google Reader account for scholarship purposes (a side-note: when I closed my original Reader account to consolidate everything in my one reliable account bearing my name I re-saved several hundred of the articles myself, by hand, one by one to this new account. The one you have closed and from which I have now lost all of the articles.) I have lost all of my bookmarks, having used Google bookmarks. I had migrated my bookmarks from computer to computer, a couple hundred of them, for maybe six years and I finally uploaded them all to Google bookmarks, happy to have found a solution to migrating them and happy to be safeguarded from their loss.