Bob at Google Blogoscoped had a bad day last week. He discovered that Google had deleted his entire Gmail account without warning.

It’s quite a disaster for him personally: “I use it religiously and it is my primary email account. I have over 300mb of CRUCIAL data in my email, none of which I have backups for.”

And it’s a reminder of two things for everyone else.

First, backups are golden. Whether you use webmail or Mail.app, a daily backup routine or mirror of your emails will save your bacon one day. Just ask Bob. Then find out what makes up a complete backup of your Mail.app data.

Secondly, Gmail has a statement in its terms of service that every Gmail user should read:

We may modify or terminate our services from time to time, for any reason, and without notice, including the right to terminate with or without notice, without liability to you, any other user or any third party. We reserve the right to modify these Terms of Service from time to time without notice…
…Google disclaims any and all responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, completeness, legality, reliability, or operability or availability of information or material displayed in the GOOGLE SERVICES results. Google disclaims any responsibility for the deletion, failure to store, misdelivery, or untimely delivery of any information or material.