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No, the loss of contacts happened for the first time about 3 years ago and has repeated roughly every 6 months. I don't understand why you think that Google ha

No, the loss of contacts happened for the first time about 3 years ago and has repeated roughly every 6 months. I don't understand why you think that Google have a better backup service than I can provide myself. I could backup my DB once per hour if I wanted. I am not anti Google but if a better service can be run from my own server then of course I will use it.

dudus 14y ago
So you think your hard drive is more reliable than a Google Data Center?
- nathanb 14y ago
  No, but I suspect I care more deeply about my own data than Google do.
  - haakon 14y ago
    I'm sure Google quite loves your data.
    - nathanb 14y ago
      But if they lose it, do they care? It's one drop in the bucket of their analytics. The incentives I have to preserve my data are greater than the incentives they have. On their side, they have some very bright minds and some very deep pockets, as well as a proven infrastructure. But if they lose my data, they lose some analytics which may cost them pennies or perhaps dollars of ad revenue. On my side, I have myself and whatever advice I can cobble together from friends and the Internet, a reasonable salary, and the occasional hour or two of spare time. But if I lose my data, I lose over a decade of accumulated emails and contact information. I will gladly allow Google to back up my data (I use gmail to archive my call logs and SMS messages right now, in fact!), but I would rather be in control of the primary copy myself.
      - koenigdavidmj 14y ago
        > The incentives I have to preserve my data are greater than the incentives they have. If you lose your data, you lose your data. If Google loses your data, they probably lost that of others too, and they make the evening news.
        nathanb 14y ago
        Apparently not, since they've been losing OPs contacts for years (assuming the article is correct) and haven't made the news about it yet.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- hp50g 14y ago
  I've run my own mail server since I got my first permanent connection in 1995. It's not hard to keep it up and reliable, especially on a small scale. It's not much harder to keep a large one up (I designed and operated a huge qmail hub in the late 90's). Everything is on hard drives just as it is at google and all the other providers. I don't use rack and data center distribution for redundancy or even RAID to be honest. However I do have a DLT and a fire safe (which acts as an anti-theft device as it weighs 200Kg) :) What I'm saying is there are varying grades of redundancy, backup and reliability. It might be good enough, or might give more confidence than the disclaimers Google offer.
  - reeses 14y ago
    As for functionality, Maildir with your MDA of choice gives you all kinds of rube-goldberg opportunities with text files. No silly "max connections" junk when your phone and your laptop hit IMAP at the same time. The one thing I really liked when going from procmail/postfix/dovecot to Google Apps was spam filtering. I hated keeping up to date with the various new methods spammers discovered to offer me good times with farm animals. Today, I get a lot of false positives, especially with the "this is spam because other people marked messages like this as spam" emails from my bank. I miss emails from family members, travel vendors, and even online shipment confirmation messages. I've had to create rules to catch them and move them to folders/labels as well as have a client-side process occasionally search for a whitelist and "rescue" the messages.
    - hp50g 14y ago
      I use postfix+Maildir. I never get spam. I rarely give out my address and if i do, its usually an alias unless i really trust the person. Spam? Delete the alias and get the fucker blacklisted as it deterministically points to the culprit. I use usenet via eternal-September.org eith an alias and some junk in the address. Has worked fine for years now.

dudus 14y ago

So you think your hard drive is more reliable than a Google Data Center?

nathanb 14y ago
No, but I suspect I care more deeply about my own data than Google do.
- haakon 14y ago
  I'm sure Google quite loves your data.
  - nathanb 14y ago
    But if they lose it, do they care? It's one drop in the bucket of their analytics. The incentives I have to preserve my data are greater than the incentives they have. On their side, they have some very bright minds and some very deep pockets, as well as a proven infrastructure. But if they lose my data, they lose some analytics which may cost them pennies or perhaps dollars of ad revenue. On my side, I have myself and whatever advice I can cobble together from friends and the Internet, a reasonable salary, and the occasional hour or two of spare time. But if I lose my data, I lose over a decade of accumulated emails and contact information. I will gladly allow Google to back up my data (I use gmail to archive my call logs and SMS messages right now, in fact!), but I would rather be in control of the primary copy myself.
    - koenigdavidmj 14y ago
      > The incentives I have to preserve my data are greater than the incentives they have. If you lose your data, you lose your data. If Google loses your data, they probably lost that of others too, and they make the evening news.
      - nathanb 14y ago
        Apparently not, since they've been losing OPs contacts for years (assuming the article is correct) and haven't made the news about it yet.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

hp50g 14y ago
I've run my own mail server since I got my first permanent connection in 1995. It's not hard to keep it up and reliable, especially on a small scale. It's not much harder to keep a large one up (I designed and operated a huge qmail hub in the late 90's). Everything is on hard drives just as it is at google and all the other providers. I don't use rack and data center distribution for redundancy or even RAID to be honest. However I do have a DLT and a fire safe (which acts as an anti-theft device as it weighs 200Kg) :) What I'm saying is there are varying grades of redundancy, backup and reliability. It might be good enough, or might give more confidence than the disclaimers Google offer.
- reeses 14y ago
  As for functionality, Maildir with your MDA of choice gives you all kinds of rube-goldberg opportunities with text files. No silly "max connections" junk when your phone and your laptop hit IMAP at the same time. The one thing I really liked when going from procmail/postfix/dovecot to Google Apps was spam filtering. I hated keeping up to date with the various new methods spammers discovered to offer me good times with farm animals. Today, I get a lot of false positives, especially with the "this is spam because other people marked messages like this as spam" emails from my bank. I miss emails from family members, travel vendors, and even online shipment confirmation messages. I've had to create rules to catch them and move them to folders/labels as well as have a client-side process occasionally search for a whitelist and "rescue" the messages.
  - hp50g 14y ago
    I use postfix+Maildir. I never get spam. I rarely give out my address and if i do, its usually an alias unless i really trust the person. Spam? Delete the alias and get the fucker blacklisted as it deterministically points to the culprit. I use usenet via eternal-September.org eith an alias and some junk in the address. Has worked fine for years now.