You should pity poor Nick Saber. The president of CrossTech Media returned to his desk on Monday after taking lunch to find himself completely locked out of all of his Google services -- even though he pays Google to use Google Apps. It brought his business to a halt.The mere thought of losing access to all of my Google services makes me quiver with fear. I rely on Google for practically everything. My Gmail account is my main e-mail address. I do all of my writing in Google Docs. I store my photos in Google's Picasa. I use Google's Reader for my RSS feeds. I use Google Maps to get directions from Point A to Point B. I use Google's Blogger to riff about the music industry in my spare time. In short, my very life depends on having access to Google's services.

So did Nick Saber's. Until Monday, that is.

When he attempted to log into his Gmail account, he received a message from Google that I hope to never see. It read, "Sorry, your account has been disabled." Um, eek!

Using another e-mail system, he tried contacting Google support (he is, after all, a paying customer). He then received this e-mail, "Thank you for your report. We've completed our investigation. Because our investigation was inconclusive, we are unable to return your account at this time. At Google we take the privacy and security of our users very seriously. For this reason, we're unable to reveal any further information about this account."

Wow, that's rather disconcerting.

It turns out that Nick was able to restore access to his account after several hours of dealing with Google customer support. Until his account was restored, his business was at a loss. Without access to his Google account, he couldn't get anything done.

I would have been in a similar quandary. Granted, I have some back-ups in place, but not all of the Google services I use can be duplicated elsewhere, such as Blogger or Gmail. I have other e-mail accounts, but my Gmail account is my main address. It's where I funnel everything. I'd be up the creek without a paddle were I ever to lose access to Gmail.

I suppose the moral of the story is, no matter how trustworthy some applications and services are, always have a back-up plan.