I wouldn’t be alone to admit that one of my most important possessions is my Gmail archive. I’ve used Gmail since it launched in 2004 as my primary personal email. This information isn’t public so I don’t know for sure, but Gmail probably had users in the low millions that year. Well over a billion people use the service now. Paul Buccheit, the former Google employee who invented Gmail, must feel good about his project progressing from just an idea to billions of users.
For most of the 2000s, texting wasn’t really a thing and most important communication happened over email. From time to time, I go looking for emails dating back well over a decade for inspiration or simply nostalgia — it gives me a peek into how a younger me thought about some topic at that time or an insight someone I communicated with had. And other times it’s information from the past I quickly want to find out like for my last post I wanted to check what year I started using Instapaper. A quick Gmail archive search gave me the answer. This utility is priceless to me.
Through the 2010s, more and more communication moved from email to texting. But I seldom find myself searching for old texts like I do with email. This is probably because a) texts are not as thoughtful as email since they’re more in-the-moment, and b) searching for texts is a user experience which has always sucked.
Email search also sucked before Gmail. But Google, originally a search company, was in the best position to fix that. And they did it well. I believe the ease of search was a big reason why Gmail continued to resonate so much with its users.
Like Gmail, for similar reasons, my iCloud Photos is another very important possession. It has all the beautiful (and mundane) moments of my life I’ve managed to capture of myself and with other people, and of places and time.
Sometimes I can’t believe how much I rely on these two services to keep my prized data safe. I put my trust in them. And I have to continue to do so throughout my life. I don’t have any other option. I feel comforted by the fact that they are the world’s biggest companies and probably won’t go out of business in my lifetime. But I also feel unnerved that they are after all companies — an everchanging set of people and priorities — and in the world of capitalism, companies are ultimately driven by bottom lines.
Yet, I try not to worry about it like how I don’t really worry about the safety of the cash in my bank accounts. We trust these companies running these services to keep our important possessions safe. As humans, trust is often all we can offer.