All things man-made will break, even Google’s own GMail.   Now, you don’t need to fuss about it if you had all your GMail data backed up.

Here’s a bunch of great resources on how to back up your GMail so the next time GMail goes down, you will still have access to your e-mail:

• If you use MS Outlook and pop your mail from GMail, you are already all good since you have downloaded all your e-mail. (unless you deleted it)  I use MS Outlook every once in awhile just to pop my e-mails from GMail.  That’s my 1st backup.

  Even if you don’t have MS Outlook, you can use any computer’s default e-mail system to setup a simple POP3 e-mail.  Just hit send/receive every once in awhile and you will have backup copies.  You can also use Firefox Thunderbird, which is completely free. (Instructions on how to setup Thunderbird with GMail here.)

• There’s a free software called GMail Backup you can use to backup all your GMail.
• For linux users, try referring to this guide on how to backup your GMail.
• Of course, you can also “forward” all your e-mails to another public e-mail address so you will always have 2 copies. – Instructions on that here.
• There’s even how to back up your GMail using “restricted” Google Groups method.

Well, that’s just a handful of ways you can back up your GMail so the next time there’s GMail outage, you will still be able to keep going.

I think the simplest way is to actually have an EMail client such as MS Outlook or Firefox Thunderbird and pop your e-mails every once in awhile.  Of course, make sure you set the e-mail POP settings so they leave GMail e-mails “unread” if you want to keep using GMail web version.  (That’s how I do it.  I have MS Outlook but I hate using it to actually send mail over my GMail web/mobile.)