... and on top of all that is the simple fact that gmail is backed by a very robust infrastructure and supported by company that's very unlikely to go out of bu

... and on top of all that is the simple fact that gmail is backed by a very robust infrastructure and supported by company that's very unlikely to go out of business anytime soon. [You can make jokes about Google reader etc, but gmail is far too important to Google's public image to make that a reasonable concern.] Together with the very decent UI, great spam handling, and free space, this makes gmail a pretty good choice for a lot of people. Even with a good free version of the software, duplicating the entire package is a huge task ...