[ynniv]

Of course you would pay for GMail - if the price was right. If an ad-free version of GMail cost 1¢/year (a lifetime for a dollar!), you would pay for it. In fact, you would probably pay a lot more that that if Google wasn't offering their service for free. And someone could easily still sell a webmail product, if it were better than GMail.

[what]

You can just mention death in all your emails to remove the ads. Google doesn't want to offend you by advertising coffins and funeral services for your deceased relative/friend. It's been a while since I've tried it, but it used to work.