We're lucky to have snatched [ourlastname].[our countries TLD] so my son can have a really nice [email protected] address which in itself seems valuable these days.
I'm also worried that if he gets the account too soon and does some kind of unintended wipe, all data is lost so maybe the backup is the way to go
30 days so that I can have enough time to delete it. Trash & Spam is excluded, and every successful downloaded email is labeled to prevent it getting downloaded again in next run.
Originally 4 years ago when I started this script, it was timing out because of about 15 years of emails. I ran it for 6 minutes only, every hour. Now once it caught up, it needs only few seconds, and there are only like 5 to 20 emails caught in its daily net.
This post was my inspiration:
e.g.
...all funneling into your inbox.
We were spending way too much money on GSuite before realising this.
Been planning to do this for my family as well. But after my (admin) passing, and with multiple children sharing the same domain name, one of my children will have to be the domain admin for everyone in the family. This might be fine if they remain in good terms and have enough trust of the admin to not screw their primary online identity...
I have yet to figure this part of the equation out.
I have a family member who I have been slowly teaching about tech. Not the how to run a server but the ideas and sometimes the specifics of something.
Most of the time they I force them to "figure it themselves" which has taught them more than tutorials ever could.
Oof. Google now charges me more than I’m comfortable paying and want us to upgrade to the next tier due to data usage.
I’m happy to move off to another email provider, but my wife is upset that she’ll lose access to all the docs that have ever been shared with her on that Google Apps account. This is truly hell.
Apparently, after we migrate off we can recreate a free, non-email Google apps account “[email protected]”, but it’ll be empty.
Suggestions, and sympathy for poor decision making 10+ years ago, welcome.
I have seen price increases a number of times already, though. What started at $5/mo/user has increased. I do feel like a captive, which breeds a bit of animosity, though.
you can “make a copy” of the docs shared to you. those copies are yours and you can download them. they’ll be included in backups, etc
You can also share them with a free account and then have the free account make copies
Then there is this which just scrolls on and on forever
(or https://gcemetery.co )
I have a suggestion to make it easier - At the highest level of your Google Drive, make a folder containing the easily exportable types such as docs, sheets, pdfs, photos.
When they shut down GPM I requested my listening data via Takeout and it was in a format that was absolutely useless to me. OP seemed to be in Germany so Google has been told by the law to allow data exfiltration, but as we've seen with Apple, these companies engage in malicious compliance and there's no guarantee that they'll get usable data from Takeout.
There's also no guarantee that over 18 years the EU regulatory bodies will remain uncaptured, and never reverse course on data controls such that Google could conceivably kill Takeout as a product due to "the excessive costs involved in supporting an organization wide data exfiltration tool"
I can't imagine losing access to 18 years of life's history and memories because Google decided to kill free accounts, or charge more than you're comfortable paying, or they suffer catastrophic data loss. Or they decide to kill Workspace accounts and they can't be converted, and you are given the data in a mostly unusable format bc they weren't told how to export the data by the law.
I've lost entire wings of my mind palace because I lost a notebook, diary, hard drive, or published works and been bereft of that knowledge or those memories. Some wings I've been lucky enough to rebuild, others are like if the Notre Dame had never been visually captured, drawn, or scanned.
Imagine planning on recording 18 years of your infant's life--all their familial social connections and day-to-day happenstance; the things that make a person who they are--, preemptively, on Google's behalf. Then imagine not even having a guarantee that you will be able to use the data you collected for its originally intended purpose.
Set this up locally and in a format you control, and can secure yourself. Put it on a tape drive or on a USB in a digital storage preserver (something to power on the nand cells so they don't bit rot)
You don't know who your son is going to turn out to be. He might come to resent you for giving Google that level of insight into his life, or for recording it at all. After all, you have decided that your son does not have a right to privacy, and essentially given it away. Better to keep it local so it can be destroyed if that's what he would desire.