One thing can hold us, one thing can break us. It's the same thing.

[reddragdiva]

I'd heard from assorted high-spec geeks that Gmail was actually good and usable, with a novel webmail interface that actually wasn't crap. So when kineticfactory offered accounts, I asked for one.

Then I noticed the nice feature where you can't ever get your mail out once it's in. But they might let you at some unspecified future date. If you pay them. 'Cos it's not like it's your mail, is it.

There are third party tools that claim to extract your mail. That's not really good enough, because vendor lockin is intrinsically evil; why should I sign up for it?

(It's dgerard at gmail dot com, for the curious.)

Note: I realise the others do the same. That doesn't give me a reason to switch. Nor does it sound appealing when Gmail's explicit goal is to become your primary email store.