So email came before Google. Email was good. You went to your computer and downloaded your inbox. You could either delete the email from the server and have it in your computer only or keep it in both places. With android and Google, the strategy was to give you an address that you couldn’t take with you anywhere, and to let you see and accumulate emails from any device such that your data could be used for AI and you couldn’t easily retain it and still use it globally. You can come up with your own email server, just not a gmail.com address. They own you until you just start elsewhere.
So email came before Google. Email was good. You went to your computer and downloaded your inbox. You could either delete the email from the server and have it in your computer only or keep it in both places. With android and Google, the strategy was to give you an address that you couldn’t take with you anywhere, and to let you see and accumulate emails from any device such that your data could be used for AI and you couldn’t easily retain it and still use it globally. You can come up with your own email server, just not a gmail.com address. They own you until you just start elsewhere.