Seconding, and I'd like to refine the point further:

> The day Google decides to lock your account (..) you are locked out from your digital life.

It takes getting banned because of mischief, perceived mischief, or algorithmic error on one of their services to instantly, and usually permanently, lose access to all of their services, and any other third party service you logged into with Google.

In other words: make a "wrong" comment on YouTube, and you lose decade(s) of your e-mails. If you were running your small business off Google's Office Suite on your personal account, well, you can kiss your business goodbye.

(In case anyone doubts that happens, I recommend checking out https://9to5google.com/2019/11/09/google-account-bans-youtub... for a recent example.)

And, of course, this pattern of behavior is not limited to Google. Big cloud services all have problematic or nonexistent customer support experience - a consequence of scaling up without paying the associated costs. It's thus more important than ever to diversify one's digital footprint and minimize dependencies.

I wanted to remove the profile picture on my account, but could not find such button anywhere in the account settings. So instead of removing, I replaced it with a blank white square. I thought I was clever.

Instead, I got a strike on my account.

IIRC it takes three strikes and you're out. But if a strike is handed out due to such a silly thing, I wonder what the next silly thing is going to be?

Clearly I cannot rely on such a platform, considering I would likely NEVER get my account back. From that point onwards, I've tried to reduce my dependency on Google accounts as much as possible.

Yes that's a risk. Our digital lives depend so much on the mercy on the tech overlords. I use third party signins only for non essential services. Like someone building a Twitter thread maker, or an online design tool. There are many tools and services which shouldn't require an account but they still insist on having one, in that case I use a third party sign in. For anything important, I prefer to create a password.

Or at least, always use a custom domain if you’re going to do this. Although even then some places make it a faff to change to another workflow with the same address.

> I go out of my way to avoid signing into services using third parties

This. I make separate account everywhere. When site doesnt allow sign in with new account I dont bother.

The way I implement Google logins on my pages is using the email to create a traditional user account that can also login with a password. Sometimes I even force the user to setup a password.

I am no fan of the idea either, but I like the option to login on a single click.