We all rely heavily on Google and its cloud of services to always be available when we need it.  The reality is that it can, and has, gone down.  So, how do you protect yourself when and if it happens to you?

Whether it’s Gmail, Google Apps, Docs, Reader, Alerts, etc., your Google Account login is your key to a variety of crucial services.  Though Google is notorious for its reliability, people can be locked out of their accounts for various reasons or the network could simply go out rendering your entire Google Account useless.  While large businesses and enterprises that have made the switch to Google Apps should have redundant backup methods in place, normal users and small business users who rely on Google services for their day-to-day pleasure or business need to prepare themselves better for an outage or lock-out.

The Wired How-To Wiki has laid out some great tips on backing up your data, and offers the excellent moniker; “Hard drives fail, Google does too. Use both, trust neither.”  Words to live by, not only with Google but with all cloud-based services that at some point or another will fail.

The most common problems facing Google account outages is when accounts are fraudulently hijacked and used for unsavory things.  Google will disable your account very quickly if things like this happen, whether it’s of your own doing or someone else.  A less common problem is Google servers simply failing.  This can happen for only a few seconds or days a time.  To combat these and other problems, it’s important to have several layers of backup handy and ready to go.

One important precautionary step you can take is to create another Gmail account, or backup account with another free provider such as Hotmail or Yahoo Mail.  This way, you can setup filters and forwarders in your Gmail or Google Apps account that will send important mail (or all your mail) to a backup account if and when you’re locked out or Google goes down.  If you’re extra worried, setup several backup accounts that double or triple forward your email so you always have your mail somewhere.

Another option is to use automated backup systems like those found in Mozilla’s Thunderbird desktop client.  The problem is you have to remember to launch Thunderbird from time to time so it fetches your new mail. Remembering to do it every month or so is probably not good enough. Advanced computer whizzes may want to try wrestling their way through Fetchmail and some cron scripts to automatically grab mail every night.

If you take some preemptive steps, and protect yourself against a potential outage, you’ll never be to far away from your beloved data, but failing to do so will leave you in the trenches with little options.  Remember, Google will go down from time to time, its the nature of the technology, so if you don’t protect yourself it’s your fault not Google’s.

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Entry was posted on Friday, November 7th, 2008 at 11:59 pm under Google, Tutorials.

Read more entries by Justin Montgomery.
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