[notacoward]

The fact that so many people who otherwise care about things like privacy, freedom, and competition all flocked to gmail anyway always seemed completely bananas to me. It's like a case study in how principle (or even long term self-interest) always loses to convenience.

[AlexandrB]

I'm guilty as charged. I even sought out a Gmail Beta* invite back in the day. At the time I was naive and believed Google's "don't be evil" marketing.

*I later also sought out a Google+ Beta invite. That one is harder to justify with just naïveté.

[jschwartzi]

Many of us did this back in the day, and now we're stuck with our gmail addresses.

[minimaul]

No, you're not.

It might be a pain to move, but it is certainly possible, and it's certainly worth the effort.

[username223]

Just be grateful you aren't stuck with a Yahoo address ;-). Owning your own domain name(s) is worth a few bucks a month.