Suddenly, Nick can’t access his Gmail account, can’t open Google Talk (our office IM app), can’t open Picasa where his family pictures are, can’t use his Google Docs, and oh by the way, he paid for additional storage. So, this is a paying customer with no access to the Google empire.

Nope, my data is safely locked up in my own mail server, my own web-server, my own backups, etc.  I’ve always felt slightly uneasy about using Gmail for all my mail.  Now I know why.