Actually, I would trust Google to challenge government subpoenas more than I would trust my current small webhost, which has probably next to no legal resources that would give it a chance in court.
Now if you and your small webhost is outside the jurisdiction of US courts then that might be a different story... At least that's the only "privacy" reason to not use gmail that I can't immediately dismiss. Anybody have any thoughts on this case?
forget information requests (let alone subpoenas), because neither google nor your webhost is going to resist being strong-armed on a targetted basis. lets look at mass-scale surveillance. lets suppose the DHS wanted 99.9% surveillance over email, and the more 9s you add the exponentially more budget it takes. i doubt your webhost made the cut.