True, the full solution is to NEVER rely on Google as a single point of failure for anything. Which means backing up all photos/documents elsewhere and never using your Google account to auth with another service. I've always avoided tying my Google account to non-google services for just this reason and haven't ever had it be a problem.
At this point we've all got these 10 year old gmail accounts that we've used as the recovery email on 1,000 websites, and while... I guess it isn't really a big deal to lose a reddit or ycombinator account, it'd be nice if there was some other option to use as the recovery email for online banking that had the stability of google.
I'd happily pay for some sort of assurance -- "if you violate our TOS, we'll just put your email in receive-only mode" or something like that.
Buy a cheap domain from Gandi for 10 years. They provide free email and DNS. Use that email for anything you care about. Stop using your gmail account and forward your gmail to your domain's email account. Gradually, you'll switch your recovery emails to the domain that you own and control.
The other nice thing about this is you can be bob@domain.com rather than bob2746293@gmail.com and you can provide email accounts to your family and friends.
That's still a SPOF though. Over the years I've had various letters from registrars and registries threatening my account due to missing information or new requirements.
GANDI themselves once accused me of ToS violation because one account uses my initials ( as on my bank account ) instead of my forenames that they demanded. I migrated everything out of that account ASAP.
Ideally you need two completely different domains ( to avoid potential trademark issues ) in two different TLDs at two registrars.
The service is a tool. I would not "never" use a battery powered drill upon it's first power loss. It has it's use case. It is important to understand the limitations of any tool. This author helps us all understand the limitations of google.
