I'm finding Google more and more intrusive. On their help page they say to log out of your account if you don't want this, but then I lose my gmail connection.

I'm finding Google more and more intrusive. On their help page they say to log out of your account if you don't want this, but then I lose my gmail connection. I've tried switching to bing for searches, but it's not as good. So I am thinking of moving from gmail - does anyone have any good recommendations as a replacement? [edit: anyone use runbox?]