> A while back I made completely separate Google accounts for YouTube and Maps just so my longstanding Gmail account wouldn't get banned if the system somehow detected that my Youtube account for example breached Google's TOS.

I bet you that if they ban one they ban the other too

the only safe way is to get your important data out of Google entirely

after manifest v3's announcement, I de-googled: gmail, chrome, search, google cloud, photos, family on android phones

2 years later, it's all gone, except youtube

and if they ban that I don't care

Which is exactly why I de-Googled much of my digital life (email, notes, password management, photos, chatbot, browser etc) except where there is no reasonable/practical alternative. The "main" account is only for those things and for old contacts in case someone reaches me via the old email. I use a secondary Google account for anything that is remotely risky.

This is a major reason I haven't worked with Gemini much. Too many eggs in that basket to mess with it. Anthropic and OpenAI at least have no other baggage for me.

Friendly reminder that Google Takeout [1] exists. When I read a story a few years ago about a guy who had his primary Google account banned with no recourse (for reselling Pixel phones) and permanently lost 20 years worth of emails and family photos, I researched and found Takeout and used it to back up all my data, then subsequently stopped using Google services altogether (apart from YouTube).

[1] https://takeout.google.com/

I moved off Gmail exactly because I didn’t want to be fresh out of luck if I ever need support.

It’s free so I’m not going to complain, but for something as vital as an e-mail, I’m willing to pay for a service to have some peace of mind.

Welcome to the club. I registered my own domain and moved my digital life off Google services 18 years ago for this exact reason. If you need another reason: They scan all of your e-mail to target ads at you and your associates. Do it. It's not that difficult!

My "new" mail provider fetches messages from Gmail to create a unified inbox, which helped with the transition. Today, I'm thinking of shutting this off given the volume of misaddressed e-mail and spam that arrives via Gmail.

To clarify: None of the comments in that thread talk about experiencing that. They have been locked out of the Gemini service, not their Google account with mail etc.

Source: I actually read them. Yes, personally. I didn't even have an LLM summarize them. I know, I'm practically a luddite.

If you are this afraid of your Gmail getting banned, I don't understand why that wouldn't translate to... moving off of Gmail. It's not even a very good service, it's slow and bad at spam detection. Leave an autoforwarder and go.