I’ve previously posted about creating a Gmail account in 2004. Google launched the service on April 1st of that year and I created my account (invite-only at the time) on April 21, 2004. In those 20+ years I accumulated more than fifteen thousand emails. Google’s pitch was their search was so good you could just keep all of your emails and they’d help you find it. And it worked pretty much as advertised. But I rarely needed to find an old email. And my ALL MAIL folder just got bigger and bigger. If memory serves, I downloaded all/most of my Google stuff a couple of times during those 20 years but never had a need to use those backups.

Most of my computing these days happens on my iPhone and my MacBook. But given my lengthy history with Google (Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar), I’ve never migrated over to Apple for these tools. Until now.

I was very impressed with Apple’s approach to AI (“Apple Intelligence”) and to get the full benefit I’ve decided to go all-in. Starting tomorrow I’ll be using Apple Mail and Calendar. Not sure yet about switching from Google Drive to iCloud. I have a lot of files in Google Drive (850 GB).

As for deleting 20+ years of emails? Felt great. If I experience any regrets, I promise to update this post.