No, because GMail works, and anyone who needs email can use it. Or one of its competitors. Yes, because your email is your identity, and that's a very good th

No, because GMail works, and anyone who needs email can use it. Or one of its competitors. Yes, because your email is your identity, and that's a very good thing to own. Unfortunately, you can only rent domain names. But once you do so, you can control your email: it doesn't matter who your service provider is, your address is the same. Of course, you could trust GMail (or whoever) to have T&Cs that you're happy with, but if one day that changes, you're stuck. A cheaper alternative to Fastmail's $50 is to use POBox.com's $20 redirection and point it to GMail. $20 + annual DNS rental, and you can switch email provider at will.