I've been using GMail roughly since it existed I think, and have thought on and off over the years about self-hosting. The notion scares me every time because with it comes thoughts of what would happen if I were to lose the domain name or server, or even if there was an outage at the "wrong time". And then there's also the idea of updating the 1 million+1 services, etc that I used it to sign up for. As much as I'm not a fan of a decent amount of what they've been doing, they're however a stable entity which offers a very reliable service for essentially free. Very likely that many others also think along those lines.

The only thing I think can compete with that is some kind of decentralized solution, also something I've thought about a bit. Like a Keyoxide-based[0] - or similar - setup that makes it virtually impossible for one to lose their online identity (since lost keys can be rotated out once one has - access to - enough proofs), and then that identity can be used - without fear - to route associated data, etc. Of course adoption of what could become an adjacent or new standard would be the next hurdle to overcome...

[0] https://keyoxide.org/

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IsTom 16 hours ago | parent [-]

> what would happen if I were to lose the domain name or server

On the other side of the coin, what would happen if google bans you? That's certainly not unheard of.

	▲	skeledrew 15 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		True, something else I've considered. But the reported incidents are few and far between, and the stories always have some trigger. I have been taking small steps to move away, though it's yet another service where "stuff" could happen: since DuckDuckGo introduced their proxy email service I got one and have been using it for my more recent sign-ups. So if something does happen to the GMail or I hit some switch-over threshold, I can point it elsewhere, though everything before would be lost.
	▲	defaultcompany 15 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		If Google bans you they at least will not hand out your email address to someone else. If your domain expires and someone else registers it that’s essentially what’s going to happen.