On: Ask HN: If Google is a monopoly, should we be doing anything about it?

[garply]

Speaking of moving my data, is there a way for me to migrate out of Gmail? I read an interview (Playboy interview with the Google founders - http://kottke.org/plus/misc/google-playboy.html) where Larry Page specifically said:

'For example, we just released Gmail, a free e-mail service. We said, “We will not hold your e-mail hostage.” We will make it possible for you to get your e-mail out of Gmail if you ever want to.'

But I haven't actually figured out how to do that yet. Does anyone know?

[themole → garply]

Yeah, just setup the pop3 account and download it. I think you export your contacts as vcards - even if not most of your contacts should be right there in your email.

I fire up thunderbird everyonce in a while to basically backup my emails because of those horror stories of people losing all their email or even access to the account

[garply → themole]

Cool, thanks.

[axod → garply]

I extracted every email from Gmail a while back. It took a few hours, but now I have local backups. I just used imap and moved things to a local imap server.

[jdbeast00 → garply]

gmail has pop and imap. what more do you want