# Removing Google as a Single Point of Failure Part 2: Gmail

DevFeed: [Removing Google as a Single Point of Failure Part 2: Gmail](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/removing-google-as-a-single-point-of-failure-part-2-gmail-20966.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://jakewharton.com/removing-google-as-a-single-point-of-failure-gmail/>)

Published: 2020-03-18T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Jake Wharton](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/jake-wharton.md>)

Topics: [Google](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/google.md>), [data](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/data.md>), [DRIVE](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/drive.md>), [Homelab](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/homelab.md>)

Tags: [backing-up](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/backing-up.md>), [data](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/data.md>), [google](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/google.md>), [home-server](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/home-server.md>), [rsync](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/rsync.md>), [security](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/security.md>)

## AI overview

The article explains how to reduce dependence on Google as a single point of failure while continuing to use Google services as the source of truth. It covers backing up Google Photos and Google Drive to a home server and rsync.net, then describes using a custom domain and Fastmail to preserve email access and support catch-all addresses.

## Source excerpt

I want to remove Google as a single point of failure in my life. In the first blog post on this subject I detailed my setup for backing up Google Photos and Google Drive contents onto my home server and remotely to rsync.net. Left out of that post was a solution for Gmail because I hadn't found one yet. Now I have. Source of truth That first post started with an important qualification: This does not mean that I'm going to stop using Google products. Quite the opposite. Gmail, Google Photos, and Google Drive will remain the source-of-truth for all of the things I listed above. What's different is that should Google disappear tomorrow (or just my account) I would lose no data. This was easy to achieve with Photos and Drive because the data is all there is. With email that's unfortunately not true. Incrementally backing up the email data is pretty straightforward-we'll get into that shortly. But with Gmail your email address is still tied to the @gmail.com domain. So if my account or all of Google disappears, I won't be able to receive any more email. Of course the "easy" fix here is to just use a domain that I control. Obviously I own jakewharton.com, and I intend to set that up, but I wanted something shorter. I've owned cob.io for many years with the intention of setting up j@cob.io, but I go by "Jake". Luckily the last few years have seen an influx of new TLDs so I managed to grab ke.fyi. Say hello to j@ke.fyi! Having an email on my own domain doesn't address the problem that there's still hundreds or thousands of services that I've given the Gmail address to. While I can migrate many, there are inevitably those which I can't or that I simply don't know exist. The old address needs to remain working. Fastmail After browsing a few hosted email solutions, I settled on Fastmail (Note: referral link). In addition to a positive recommendation from a friend, there were a few key motivating factors. Domain catch-all A popular feature of Gmail is the ability to append a +