Where is the redundancy?

I'm getting a little worried. On two separate occasions in the last two weeks I've now been stuck without a piece of software that I've grown rather dependent on. The first time it was dictionary.com, while today there was suddenly a problem with gmail. I tried to overcome the first site's down time by finding another site, but soon discovered that the only other reliable and worthwhile dictionary site out there (which also has a thesaurus, though no encyclopedia) wanted me to suddenly pay for the words I was trying to access!

Today's down time with Gmail made me even more worried, for there is no real alternative for me to my gmail. This made me realise that I've become very dependent upon software that I have absolutely no control over. This stuff is free and they can take it away as they please, when they please.

Wasn't the internet supposed to introduce redundancy? Wasn't everybody shouting about how it would be fantastic, because if one place crashed others would come up to take over? How does that work when you're dependent on that part that has just crashed?

I know, I've got to somehow set up some kind of backup system. Because, even though I pray that one day it won't matter where we are in terms of what we want to do, I also know that that day isn't here yet.