Google is a big company because of big data accumulation and big advertising, as is Facebook. Some of us want to be in control of our email accounts and not be affected by advertising. That's also why I listen to NPR (US National Public Radio), which is not distorted by advertising. I like a company who is big enough to be stable and provide great service but small enough to have identifiable employees:
https://www.fastmail.com/about/company.html
https://blog.fastmail.com/
I suggest you look over a few of the recent Fastmail blog entries. Fastmail is very involved in the technical side of email and attends many technical conferences and contributes to several open-source projects.Google and Microsoft (and AOL and Facebook) act in their own best interests, which involve advertising. It's a different model, and involves monetizing each interaction with a user. I would rather pay for what I use rather than be affected by those advertisements and lack of personal security in my use of the service.
Don't be fooled into thinking that services which feed you advertising are "free". Companies are spending an aggregate of hundreds of dollars a year in advertising per person, and anticipate receiving several times that investment in increased sales to
you. See:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/...nd-per-person/
Here is how Google explains their target ROAS (Return On Ad Spend):
https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/6268637?hl=en
I'm willing to spend a tiny fraction of the amount I spend on coffee or tea at restaurants to keep my email mine without being bombarded with advertisements designed to subliminally affect me without my noticing. I realize that many others don't worry about this, and my feeling is that they are spending far more than they realize on purchasing a few items they would not have otherwise purchased due to advertisements than the cost of a good paid email account.
Bill