Happened to me too after 10 years of Gmail use. Exactly the same story. No explanation. As I remember at that time I checked Google servers data as to uptime—the data was public, not sure about now—and it appeared that there was a serious problem with servers right before I was blocked. It looked like Google just completely lost data in some server cluster. Anyway, there was no way to get any response from Google or at least my gmail address reactivated even with data lost for me to be able to access other services that I used the email to access. I think it was Google's fault. The company lost data, but didn't want to admit it and blamed me for breaking some policy without any further details to explain absence of access to my data.
Since then I use my own domain for email, could easily switch email provider while keeping the address in case there is a problem, and I'd still control access via the email to other services. Also I never rely on Google as to files, photos, or videos. I mean yeah I use Google, YouTube etc., but everything is first of all backed up on MS OneDrive. Even on my Android phone there is automatic upload of all new photos to OneDrive. Google Photos is more like for easy viewing, sharing and presentation. Not backup. Not to mention that MS Office + OneDrive storage subscription provides much more value that Google G Suite.
It would be nice if in these cases the “lock” allowed read only (as in, can still receive email, just not send it) gmail access so one could at least move whatever account they were using gmail as contact for. I think it should not be that hard for google to add this and would help with a lot of cases where losing gmail access means severe disruption to one’s life.
My wife and I each have "partner sharing" setup in our Google Photos accounts so that we both have all of the photos in our own accounts. One could probably make a second account just for backups and setup partner sharing for this purpose. You can only have one account configured this way though, so choose your real partner or a backup account.
We also back up to Amazon Photos as well, just for extra peace of mind.
I pull my phone photos via rsync and I backup my gmail and my wife's gphoto via an api key backup script.
This way i don't lose any data. I have a grandfathered custom domain, that my kids and other family members use; so it would suck. I could however move the domain anywhere. It would just be a bit more expensive.
Because MS Office is a different business than giving away free accounts to collect user data. It provides cloud services for money. I guess MS has much better redundancy mechanisms and pretty much committed to not lose your data.
Well, shit happens sometimes even with people having the best intentions to do the right thing. Though I didn't hear about a single case of MS losing people's data. But I'm sure MS would handle such situations differently than blaming it on a user and just terminating accounts.
Value = proper Office suite online and offline with proper document formatting and files + more storage. Altogether cheaper than G Suite. Also it's really great value to have Office installed locally as a proper software. Not a crappy dumbed down browser web-site.
I pay for Gsuite which is $6/mo and extra 100gb of storage, for $8 total. The part that drives me nuts about 0365 is that they don't allow custom email domains below Business 0365 which is $12 a month.
Personal plan doesn't allow you to use custom domain for the email address EXCEPT for 1 domain that is registered with GoDaddy. And you can't share that domain with another account.
well yeah my case is that Excel and word are the best option. They integrate nicely with onedrive and you can plugin the documents into sharepoint and several other platforms within microsoft ecosystem
i might be biased due the fact am an azure power user and have several other tools that work together
At least in Germany some sites/blogs reported in the last few month that many users lost their Microsoft accounts without reason, so i wouldn't be too sure about this.
How are you doing full android backups? I recently discovered this is basically impossible without either using Google's cloud or rooting (which has it's own inconveniences..)
Since then I use my own domain for email, could easily switch email provider while keeping the address in case there is a problem, and I'd still control access via the email to other services. Also I never rely on Google as to files, photos, or videos. I mean yeah I use Google, YouTube etc., but everything is first of all backed up on MS OneDrive. Even on my Android phone there is automatic upload of all new photos to OneDrive. Google Photos is more like for easy viewing, sharing and presentation. Not backup. Not to mention that MS Office + OneDrive storage subscription provides much more value that Google G Suite.