I'm an ex Google Apps user and now a happy FastMail user. I left Gmail for many reasons, some technical (poor IMAP support, unhappy with the available clients)

I'm an ex Google Apps user and now a happy FastMail user. I left Gmail for many reasons, some technical (poor IMAP support, unhappy with the available clients) and some ideological (I don't want to vote with my wallet for monocultures). However ... > Have your own domain for emails Gmail allows you to own your domain. You just subscribe for Google Apps, at $5 / user / month, which is reasonable. > If you don't pay for the product, you are the product Well, with Google Apps you very much pay for the product. But I don't agree with such thoughts not even for the free Gmail. Yeah, it's a cute line, but has nothing to do with reality, the reality being that products being sold have to be produced, the essence of capitalism being to lower the costs and increase the scale, turning sold products into commodities and users, by being people, are anything but commodities, being in fact entities that in comparison with hardware or whatever, can always get pissed off or switch to a competitor. Such lines also assume a very simplistic view of the producer / consumer relationship. Cash changing hands is nice, but in our world an ecosystem is much more complex than that, much like how in nature there's a very complex and life creating relationship between predators, cattle and grass, each link in that food-chain being essential for the survival of everything else. And the genius of Google has been to recognize that the welfare of users is paramount to their success, though unfortunately they seem to forget that ever since Google+ and Vic Gundotra. More realistic would be to say that a zero price tag is in fact subsidized with something else, as there's always an implicit cost. The cost of the free Gmail is lock-in. And just like in nature where monocultures are unhealthy for everybody, free Gmail is hurting competition and worse, they are dropping the ball on standards. So Android is my favorite mobile OS, but can you believe that Android doesn't have a modern, well designed and standard email client? I mean, you're good as long as you're a Gmail user. Exchange also works. But for plain IMAP? Say goodbye to push email and to basic functionality, like archiving by swiping. They should also be ashamed that Android doesn't support CalDAV or CardDAV out of the box, though granted you can buy some add-ons.