It's worth remembering how so many came to use these services in the first place – as a tech 'front liner' I too was once guilty of unconditionally mocking othe

It's worth remembering how so many came to use these services in the first place – as a tech 'front liner' I too was once guilty of unconditionally mocking others and saying "you should be on Gmail!". Now the tech front is reversing its position, and hopefully the rest of society will eventually follow. Unfortunately the scene isn't set just now, because there simply aren't good alternatives to Gmail – nothing free or self hosted comes remotely close to its clean UI. When such a thing exists, selling regular users on moving away from Google will be a much easier proposition [If you're reading this and thinking of cloning Gmail – for fuck's sake don't waste your time "innovating" on the UI and getting it horribly wrong! (This was really the biggest tragedy of the Reader transition). Do a pixel perfect conversion. Except for artwork, cloning a UI is perfectly legal as demonstrated by case law going back 20+ years in the EU and USA.]