Checking out from Google

I never wanted Gmail. I always had an email account to which I identify more strongly than any free service around, even when it means not having the hability of «ubiquitousness», but I never needed it anyways. I also already had a Jabber account to which I also identified a lot; both accounts where from two NGOs where I participated.

But then a lot of friends already had Gmail accounts when Gtalk came out. Before that we used mostly other IM networks to communicate, and now a new one came. Everybody was using it, and even when we knew that the backing protocol was XMMP/Jabber, initially Gtalk's servers were not open to other networks, which meant that the only way to communicate via Jabber with people with Gmail accounts was having one too. So I did.

Even then, I never used that Gmail/Gtalk account as an email account. At some point I started using it as a disposable account for registering to other services that I suspected or knew that could spammy, or that I didn't want them to be associated to my real email.

Then I went to Europe and that changed a few things. First, I started another blog in Blogspot for communicating with my family; I already had one, but before Google bought them. I also started using Picasa for showing my family and friends where I have been and what I had seen. This meant that I started mixing a disposable account with a not so much one, but at the time I didn't care.

Google was never shy on using the network effect. Google Plus was another of the products I was dragged into (just to see a friend's photos); I never correctly setup my personal account for using Google Groups, so I used the Gmail account instead; also Calendar and Docs. Currently my Google account also includes Profile (whatever that is), AdSense (yes, I tried to jump into that wandbagon too), Android Devices and Play, Chrome Sync (I should had disabled it at first use; I don't really use the browser), iGoogle (does anybody use that?), Tasks (I don't even remember setting those two up) and of course YouTube (which I used to access «adult-only» content).

Apart from all that, I don't always use Google search, I switch between Yahoo! and DuckDuckGo, or more specialized sites like the Wikipedia or the documentation sites for the languages and software I use. I can say that the only product I would miss if I couldn't use, and for which I don't need an account, is Maps. Most of the time I use it for calculating times from place A to place B, sometimes passing through place C. For maps I prefer OpenStreetMap. An interesting note about Maps: Google has been using GeoIP for «guessing» the language for searchs, completely ignoring the settings in my browser (hint: I live in a country whose official language is not English, which I prefer for technical stuff, or Spanish, which is my native tongue), but Maps always starts in USA (I definetely don't live there).

Yesterday morning I openend that Gmail account and got this beautiful surprise message:

«Oye, esto es importante: si alguna vez pierdes el acceso a tu cuenta, podemos enviarte los datos de restablecimiento de contraseña a [my personal email account]». Translated says: «Hey, this is important: if you ever loose the access to your account, we can send you the password recovering data to [my personal email account]».

This was too much: I never told google that the two accounts were related; in particular, this is not a message reminding me that they're using that account for password recovery. They're telling me for the first time that somehow they figured out that that's my other email account and that is that. I'm pretty sure is not hard to figure that out, but still I think is another step into my digital life.

Today I will start the process of make this account dissapear. Since a few months now I started using a Jabber account associated to my personal email account (the address is the same), and given that for some years already you can connect to Gmail/Gtalk users from other XMMP/Jabber servers, I've been slowly migrating users to the new jabber address. Today I sent a last batch of «indispensables» and I'll add the rest on a need-to basis.

Initially, the data export offers me 4 options: my Picasa photos, which I don't care about, as I already host my own galleries, my Profile data, my Stream data, whatever that is, and my circles and Contacts data. Good thing is once you actually are in Google Takeout, you can select which services you want to export, including Blogger, which is the one I'm most insterested in.

So after selecting Profile, Blogger and Contacts, I create and download the archive. What is interesting is that during this process I was asked my password several times. Probably is just extra security for those who have their accounts constantly logged in in their browsers.

The data I extracted was mostly complete, or at least at the levels I wanted: All the posts from the 3 blogs in Atom format (for a second I though it would only include those that normally are in the feed, like the last 10 or 15), the contacts in VCS format and a json on my profile, with not much else. All this contained in a zip file. Mike Hommey has an analisys of the data you get while exporting your Reader account, and how is not enough for him (and I would guess, a lot of people that used reader for more than just reading feeds).

It's incredible that after all this, it still took me 10 minutes of staring at «you're about to delete everything on Google» to finally hit the «yes, I do» button. The process was way less painful that I envised, but then Google is the company whose motto used to be «do no evil». Definetely, they're not Facebook.

For closing, a statistic that shows the mean lifespan of all the services closed by Google.