This sounds great. I imagine a world where gmail had a setting whereby they had to use my storage for their service, mounted over the internet using SSHFS or so

This sounds great. I imagine a world where gmail had a setting whereby they had to use my storage for their service, mounted over the internet using SSHFS or something. This would be fantastic! No more IMAP syncing to backup my data. My data would already be my data. Even if the “pod” is a virtual one in a data center, as long as the webmail provider is a different company to the pod provider, the data access is granular enough, and the terms of service enforce that the data is stored in a way that’s readable by me, this can only be a good thing. Perhaps legislation could help here? What if the service company starts encrypting the data they store on my pod and refuses to give me the key? It would be good to wield the power of a regulator against bad actors who do this and any other shady rule bending. Very exciting.