[anotherperson]

I would rather it just cost less as opposed to entirely free. If there were a paid alternative to GMail, I would move away from that too.

Paying for something reduces the likelihood that the provider will do unscrupulous things with my data for financial gain. Or at least I feel like they’d be less likely. And ignorance is bliss, right?

[fierarul]

I dunno, I pay for extra storage on GMail (and the rest of Google's services) and I don't think it removes the ads. It's just extra storage.

[altano]

There is such an alternative: hosted Exchange. ActiveSync is an almost ubiquitous protocol.

Add on the fact that it's currently usually businesses that use it, and I feel even safer that my data won't be fucked with or social networked (cough buzz) on a whim. Maybe on a little more, but probably not a whim :)

It's what I use and love.

[bmalicoat]

I feel similarly. I started paying for extra gmail storage after reading a story of how one guy's gmail just ceased to be one day. I hope that somehow by paying, gmail has a small motivation to keep mine in existence. Probably wrong, but it makes me feel better.