I think it's a good idea to own your own domain name, at least as a tech savvy user. You can still use Google Apps with it (Google for work now?). That being s

I think it's a good idea to own your own domain name, at least as a tech savvy user. You can still use Google Apps with it (Google for work now?). That being said, I think it's a bit unfair to say companies won't lift a finger to help protect their users usernames. On the technical security level, many companies put a lot of effort into things like 2F, general internet security, etc. In particular Google, but also Dropbox, github, and others. On the service level (i.e. what happens when you have to talk to someone) everybody could probably improve quite a bit. OTOH that's costly and would ultimately need to be paid for by the customers somehow. On the legal level, there isn't really anything these companies could do for you. If you do not own a trademark for your chosen domain name (account name, page name, ...), you'll lose it to someone who does [0]. That also won't change if you have all kinds of friends in all kinds of places - your problem then is basic trademark law, not the goodwill of some company (that has to adhere to the law, after all). Disclaimer: I work for Google. [0] possibly with the exception of the account or domain name being your legal name, but I don't think there's a general norm for that.