I wish google would provide an idea of product supported lifetimes similar to the LTS releases we see from Ubuntu. Give us a product and tell it will be supported until at least XX/XX/XX date.
I simply do not use google products beyond search and maps because I can't trust they'll be around without significant changes (gmail) or discontinuation.
Honestly, Hotmail isn't too bad these days. I have to use it for a mail account I manage for someone else, and it's pretty on par with Gmail. Not quite there, but pretty close. And since it's from Microsoft, you know that it will be supported for a long time.
Going one step further you can have an archaic email address using Juno (still laying, not that you asked) or Bigfoot.com (still works but company resold many times)
Having an @hotmail address no longer makes you look prehistoric on a résumé. There are probably as much (or even more) stupid internet users on @gmail.
That's actually the reason why I use Gmail instead of switching to a smaller email service - it's "too big to fail," I don't think Gmail will be discontinued for as long as Google exists, even if it became somewhat unprofitable, due to the outrage and class action lawsuits that would result.
Hosting an email server in these days with DMARC, SPF, DKIM and all those mail filtering blacklist is is world of pain but that's the price to pay for reduced spam I guess.
I wish there was a modern protocol equivalent with authentication builtin.
Paying for it has its risks as well. If you are unable to access for an extended amount of time (injury, travel, etc) and your payment method becomes invalid, it could cause your account to be shut down.
I second the Fastmail recommendation. Not only has their service been great, but they're also actively working on improving email for everyone (for example with all their work on introducing and standardizing JMAP).
I third the Fastmail recommendation. Just changed over to use their app on my phone as well, much better folder management etc than Apple's native app.
I used to be in the "no webmail" camp until I started using Fastmail. I now find myself keeping a Safari pinned tab to their webmail and using it as my primary email interface.
Also speaking of mobile apps, Fastmail actually supports push notifications for email in Apple Mail. I'm not aware of any other third party email provider that's ever done that (I believe Yahoo! has support for that but Apple did that themselves when the iPhone first came out).
I used Hangouts on Air to live stream several weddings. It was great because you could set it up ahead of time, send out the private link to whoever you want, and the link would work both during the event and after - no need to upload the recorded video. Oh well, time to look for something else now.
There was a Hangouts on Air ? Its funny that some of these discontinued Google products seem to get more attention at their ending then at their start.
For a little while there were startups being built around it even (AirPair comes to mind, though they eventually switched to Slack, and now is more or less defunct)
Oh interesting, I didn't realize airpair was basically dead. Looks like last twitter post was in 2016, and their articles all have comments from 4 years ago
Gives a 404 for me, but my understanding is that YouTube Webcam is streaming of your own webcam and that’s it.
The feature that made Hangouts Live so good was that groups of people could instantly stream together from anywhere in the world, and the focus shifted to whoever was talking. It made multi-person casts incredibly simple and didn’t require having someone running OBS and managing the stream.
Not a paid product, and "heavily used" maybe not, but was the only native(ish) way to live stream a group call to YouTube. You could live stream a podcast style show w/ no extra hardware or software, just your youtube/google account. It was was birthed out of Google+ so its not altogether surprising it got killed, but I was watching a live stream just last week that was using it.
I simply do not use google products beyond search and maps because I can't trust they'll be around without significant changes (gmail) or discontinuation.