> running a server is much tougher now and you can't really pull it off without blessings from Google and others Only true if you care about Gmail (a centraliz

> running a server is much tougher now and you can't really pull it off without blessings from Google and others Only true if you care about Gmail (a centralized service) getting your e-mail and delivering it to its users. You could just not care about Gmail and still interoperate with lots of mail servers - even lots of servers that do have Google's blessing.