ASK HN: I completely lost access to my main Gmail account

The only way I helped him was by having a friend who worked at Google. I hope you do too. You can tweet at them, but I think your Twitter account needs to be linked to the email address you no longer have access to.

I'm still so angry at Google that it actually made me emotional to type this. From the bottom of my heart, fuck that company for tricking us into thinking we can trust it with the most important parts of our digital lives. I hope the US breaks them up.

> probably offended so many people in my circle by not seeing/not replying to their emails.

If I were you, I'd BCC everyone whose addresses you remember with a short note saying to the effect of "I lost my other mail address so-and-so@gmail.com, gimme a sec pls" and I'm sure this incident will have no long-term impact on your reputation. Shit happens.

As far as getting help from Google goes, I think the only reliable method for non-paying customers is to raise a huge stink on websites like this or Twitter. Take this with a grain of salt, however; I'm much more likely to observe these big stinks and less likely to hear about people just calling support and getting help. It _may_ be possible.