Even if your time is worth $0, you're paying far more than a few dollars a month to have a google account. Price discrimination from third party vendors is probably running you 5-10% of your credit card bill every month.
Democracy is the style of ruling where majority's ignorance dominates over the vulnerable. You will be eventually forced to use internet and forced to use the way your government wants you to use it.
Yeah, fair point. They're certainly trying to push it in that direction but so far there are still alternatives. I've seen age verification get a hell of a lot of pushback so that's encouraging.
I can set up all of the personal services I want. The average person does not want to do that. They do not have the skills, and it does not add value for them to do so 99.999999% of the time.
The tools and offerings we're given are built to fulfill the needs of the greatest number of people. For better or worse, those people are not people who want to mess with the infrastructure around their email.
Because when most people use the one email host, they neglect all other users. Even my yahoo email is regarded as second grade citizen now. A hospital straight told me they refuse all yahoo addresses.
I mean, that's certainly retarded, but most businesses aren't that stupid in how they choose to run things. I've never, not even once, run into a business who cares what your email is. They will use any address you want, whether you have a known provider, or self host.