> This period of most people getting free email is really quite short historically. A decade. I do agree from a long perspective free email has been somewhat s

> This period of most people getting free email is really quite short historically. A decade. I do agree from a long perspective free email has been somewhat short. But I'm not sure about scoping it to just a decade. It was easy to get a Gmail account in 2004, that's close to 20 years ago. And Gmail wasn't even the first free email host, loads of people used other free email services like Yahoo (1997), Hotmail (1996), Lycos (1997), and others. 1996-2024 is 28 years, close to three decades.