People would move as long as there are similar quality free services
But are there? Everyone knows Gmail. Gmail is so ubiquitous that when signing up for some things online, the systems sometimes pre-fill "@gmail.com" for the user.
People will leave Gmail at the same rate they leave Facebook — very slowly. And because of the same reasons. Everyone they know, all of their mailing lists, newsletters, coupons, etc... are already on Gmail. They don't want to have to track down a couple of hundred sources and tell them a new e-mail address.
E-mail is very sticky. People on HN who don't work directly with the public typically don't understand that there are MILLIONS and MILLIONS of @hotmail.com, @att.net, @earthlink.net, @aol.com, @yahoo.com, and other "legacy" e-mail addresses that are very active.
And before the usual HN ageism kicks in, I'm current working with a dataset that involves about 200,000 Americans in ten states between 18 and 45, and nearly 5% of them are on @aol.com.
But are there? Everyone knows Gmail. Gmail is so ubiquitous that when signing up for some things online, the systems sometimes pre-fill "@gmail.com" for the user.
People will leave Gmail at the same rate they leave Facebook — very slowly. And because of the same reasons. Everyone they know, all of their mailing lists, newsletters, coupons, etc... are already on Gmail. They don't want to have to track down a couple of hundred sources and tell them a new e-mail address.
E-mail is very sticky. People on HN who don't work directly with the public typically don't understand that there are MILLIONS and MILLIONS of @hotmail.com, @att.net, @earthlink.net, @aol.com, @yahoo.com, and other "legacy" e-mail addresses that are very active.
And before the usual HN ageism kicks in, I'm current working with a dataset that involves about 200,000 Americans in ten states between 18 and 45, and nearly 5% of them are on @aol.com.