You get what you pay for

Given that users pay absolutely nothing for Google services by definition you wave your right to complain when they go wrong. The Google SLA has so much wiggle room for the company, including saying they will *not* pay any monetary compensation, you haven't got much of a leg to stand on. In fairness to Google they have never described themselves as infallible anyone that believes so is an idiot. The chances are they don't back up much if any customer data, they might have fault tolerance and mirroring, but the idea your data is being backed up to another site or other media is probably a fantasy. My mail service is also online but since it's a paid for service I know it's being backed up and has a sensible SLA why my data actually has a value. There's nothing wrong unreliable or unstable about online services except when you're expecting a 2GB+ mailbox for nothing. If your not prepared to pay anything for your data, why should you think it's any more valuable to Google?