[earthboundkid]

Server side email has the failure mode of the company going broke or banning you. Client side email has failure modes like destruction of device (house fire, flood, other accidents) or even just obsoleting of OS/app. Neither is inherently superior to the other.

In the particular case of the emoji ban, the problem is that the FTC should never have allowed one company to control search AND email AND school document sharing AND maps/reviews AND video AND mobile phones, etc. If you don't use Google for your email, there's no danger of Google banning you from it. :-) More seriously, Google (and Amazon and Facebook and Microsoft+Github) needs to be broken up to protect consumers from one company having a chokehold on their digital lives.