> Point is, this type of shit happens and you should have a contingency.

Let's work through what the contingency could have been. Always make sure you buy international roaming everywhere you go? Always be able to switch your MX records (from a provider whose account isn't tied to a Google-controlled email)?

They seem to get increasingly less practical to be honest. People travel all over the world everyday, this shit shouldn't be hard for a company like Google that supposedly ingests mountains of data.

More to the point, I think email has become sort of a fundamental right given how much of your identity depends on it. Companies that control this sort of identity foundation need to be heavily regulated, and perhaps nationalized.