Google states that it provides 99.978% uptime for Gmail (no uptime figures are available for overall G Suite platform), with zero scheduled downtime for maintenance. And there exist known cases when Google lost its cloud customers' data - due to force majeure circumstances such as lightning blasts, massive power outages and fires, or downtimes for unknown reasons.
But while Google can loose your data, most of the data in the cloud is lost due to its users' actions, as well as miscommunications between end-customers and Google.
Here is a list of the most representative cases of G Suite data data loss:
- G Suite data deleted due to unresponsive Google support - whenever Google is unable to charge your card for the services, it gives you some grace period before removing your account. In some cases Google fails to communicate, and there is a risk that you account will be unexpectedly removed.
- G Suite account & data deleted by Google without notice - whenever Google deems that you violate their Term of Service, you account may be deleted without any prior notice. In this case a user purchased free (legacy) G Suite account from a 3rd party, which constitutes a violation of Google TOS. Based on G Suite help forum, Google often deletes G Suite accounts and all user data without notice.
- G Suite data deleted due to unresponsive Google support - whenever Google is unable to charge your card for the services, it gives you some grace period before removing your account. In some cases Google fails to communicate, and there is a risk that you account will be unexpectedly removed.
- G Suite data deleted due to unresponsive Google support - whenever Google is unable to charge your card for the services, it gives you some grace period before removing your account. In some cases Google fails to communicate, and there is a risk that you account will be unexpectedly removed.
In order to protect their data from deletion, organizations typically used thrid-party G Suite backup solutions. Unlike the built-in G Suite backup & recovery capabilities (learn more about Google Takeout and Google Vault in a separate blog post), the third-party backup tools provide a recovery option that is completely independent from Google. Afi develops a fast and reliable cloud-to-cloud backup for G Suite, that enables full-fidelity automated data backup, instant restore as well as the offline data export. The service uses G Suite API to pull data and restore it back, but it works independently and if you lose access to your G Suite account you will still be able to recover the data using Afi.
