A long while ago I wrote about being Done with Google. They have simply taken over too much for my taste. Frankly however, I went “all in” on Google around 2006 or so. I moved many domains into the Google Apps and enjoyed all the services they offered. But, as they grew these services suffered; my most critical issue then was that inbound messages were getting dropped (because of how Groups had changed for Businesses over time) – it negatively impacts my customer service. So I started the migration out.
First let me say that you cannot escape Google 100%; just not possible. If you want to have a business presence on the Internet you must engage with Google and other large players (Twitter, Facebook, etc). So, we still have to maintain a Google Account – but we are moving towards one, based on a Gmail address.
As I mentioned before I have/had a number of domain accounts with Google using Mail and, as it turns out, many other services. Some I could just drop and had so little content I didn’t care but for the Edoceo brand I had loads of stuff – from Blogger (migrated to WP); Apps on the Play Store, YouTube, Google+ Pages and all that jazz.
Using a single “unified” Google Account (already existing) I started with a spreadsheet tracking all domains I had moved into Google (>5, <10) and then all the Services in there; then all the Accounts.
Last entry on this topic was over a year ago. It’s taken that long to audit and build this list. It was quite shocking to see how much interaction/integration with Google one human (or one company) has.
Stay tuned for the longer stories of migration of various accounts & services.