[steveeq1]

> I grew to accept that email is not for secure messaging and my paranoia of "I'm being watched" just went away.

Agreed. Even if you use protonmail, google still has most of your email because they have the most of everyone else's.

[ravenstine]

True, though I still think it's preferable to use for business, purchases, and logins. If I'm using an email besides Gmail, at least it means that I have a shot in that Google won't immediately know that I signed up for X service or made X purchase. Sure, they probably can figure those things out in other ways, but I'm not going to willingly hand everything directly to them.

Part of the reason I use Protonmail(and pay for it) is because I want to support the notion that the web can be made up of different services as opposed to all being calls to .google.com or .facebook.com.

[newscracker]

I feel very frustrated when I hear this argument, as if it’s futile to switch to a different email provider. It’s actually hyperbole. Most people use chat and messaging platforms (or social media platforms) to communicate with others. Personal email, IME, has reduced drastically over the years. That leaves emails that businesses send to individuals, which are usually sent through non-free-profiling-based-Gmail methods (including GSuite, which Google cannot use to profile people). Only small businesses that don’t know any better or don’t want to spend money on email would use an @gmail address (or @yahoo, @outlook, etc.) to correspond with potential and current customers.

[CivBase]

> Even if you use protonmail, google still has most of your email because they have the most of everyone else's.

I have far more incoming emails than outgoing and most of them are automated - probably not using GMail. That includes most of the most sensitive content like invoices and account management.