Don’t wait for your account to be hacked, backup your Google Docs with Google Takeout

I have a friend who had their Gmail account hacked the other day and thought for a while they lost everything (contacts, archived emails, documents). After I felt bad for them, I realized how much stuff I had in my Google account that wasn’t anywhere else. It set me on a mission to find out how to backup my account, specifically my Google Documents, so I have another copy of my files on the computer and not just in the cloud. I also use Backupify Australia to protect my Google Workspace apps.

There are lots of different ways to do this. While you can pay for some services that do it automatically, I think using google.com/takeout is your best bet for the money it costs — nothing.

This free service from Google not only lets you backup your documents (as can be seen in the video above), but you can also download a host of other information you have stored in Google from your contacts to your Picasa photos.

I have set a monthly reminder in my Google Calendar to alert me each month to download a backup of my Google Docs from Takeout each month. That way, if the unthinkable happens and my account is hacked or accidentally deleted, I will have most of my information.