I suggest all HN readers use this opportunity to stop using Google accounts, if they haven't done so already. Potential benefits: * Better privacy (on many/most alternatives); Google will no longer read your email, store it for use by themselves and their partners, and perhaps pass a copy along to the NSA as Edward Snowden has revealed happens. * Less exposure to manipulative ads, and lower finesse of manipulation du…
* While you can Takeout your data, enjoy the process of reshuffling gigabytes of Drive contents, calendar entries, YouTube videos, etc. Into other application systems.
* Disconnection from the Cloud makes everything strictly less convenient. "Oh, I'll just throw you a Drive link... Oh wait, I guess I'm going to have to upload it to something else that you may or may not have access to, or email it to you and hope that your email server and my email server agree on what the maximum transfer size is, or I'll upload it to a web server and toss you a password in hope nobody else cracks it while you're getting it because I misconfigured my server." Then, of course, if they need to make changes they'll have to email their copy back to you... Remember the days of report-final-final2-june-version.doc? Enjoy going back to that.
* Replacing one set of integrated Google services with a slew of third-party solutions means none of those solutions are expected to work with each other, and while you leave behind the disadvantage that Google could decide your account is terminated and you lose access to everything, you'll be replacing it with a disadvantage that any individual third party provider could pivot or collapse and you lose access to the service they provide. To say nothing of the need to have to track dozens of authentication credentials now, unless you delegate to a third party identification provider (whoops, that's also Google...). And, of course, since they're not funded by the largest advertising network on the planet, at least half those services will charge you money to be less convenient.