You always have to rely on someone, but you can structure your affairs so that you're only temporarily reliant on them to provide service today, not to provide

You always have to rely on someone, but you can structure your affairs so that you're only temporarily reliant on them to provide service today, not to provide service indefinitely. If your email address is "me@gmail.com", you're stuck with Google. If they suspend your account, you're in big trouble. If your email address is "me@myname.com", you're a free agent. You can use Gmail or Fastmail or some random hosting company or a mailserver on a Raspberry Pi. You can use DNS or forwarding to send your mail wherever you like, you can transfer your domain name to any registrar you like. Rule zero. If all your files are in Google Drive or Dropbox and nowhere else, suspension of your account could mean total data loss. If you have a local backup on a NAS or a mirror on Glacier or Backblaze, you're just mildly inconvenienced. Rule two. Eliminate single points of failure wherever possible. Avoid vendor lock-in. Don't rely on a service unless you have a contingency plan if that service fails. Treat everything as if it were hopelessly unreliable.