Almost twenty years ago, captivated by the convenience of new web technologies, we moved all our mail services to Google, migrating all our friends and clients who — having requested and obtained their personal @bastard.it email — wanted to join the initiative. Gmail was still in public beta—it would remain so for another couple of years—and Google promoted its adoption by providing free and unlimited infrastructure and support to select clients, including Those Lazy Italians @ bastard.

Hyper-Dependence and a Single Point of Failure

Today, Google is what's known as a global hyperscaler, with a number of registered accounts equal to almost one-third of the entire world's population. Dozens of services are offered, going far beyond the mail and calendar that prompted our initial migration. They are all interconnected and rely on a user's single Google account. The lock-in is extremely powerful, the costs are high, and the concentration is such that a global downtime of its data centers, even for just a few hours, would have devastating economic and social consequences, revealing the fragility of a web built on very few pillars.

Piercing the Veil

We are leaving. Partly because we are dreamers, always used to making things for ourselves—and not just clothes—and partly because we believe that on the other side, there still exists a universe made of people, machines, and interconnected nodes. A universe upon which to re-build a network based on fundamental protocols and not just on centralized services and social networks, open, free, and why not, perhaps even distributed.

Returning to the Web, With New Tools

So what? We're still smiling.

Starting in January 2026, all our mail services will be self-managed. The old-fashioned way, but with today's open-source technology stacks and the timeless protocols.

If you have a @bastard.it address and want information about the migration, write to us at postmaster@bastard.it

See you around!

#deGoogle #selfhosting #DIY