I really don’t care about amp for email. But I’m very worried about amp for the web because it means we give up control of our content and features and will need to live by googles rules.
I know what you mean, but at a certain level of abstraction, isn't that what web programming is all about? You already live by Chrome+Firefox+Safari+IE rules. I mean sure, there's a complicated political process, but it's still rules made by other people working for large organizations that the average web programmer just accepts. It's not like we all had a vote about Flash. Or JavaScript, for that matter.
There's a lot you can do while working within the rules, though.
It's just a client-side thing then, right? I can send email to a GMail user from a non-AMP client and I can receive email from a GMail user. I don't think there are any mail system interoperability concerns, are there?
I assume sending will always work as expected (they aren't about to start demanding things be AMP formatted), but who knows what your client might render an AMP email looking like.
There's a lot you can do while working within the rules, though.