Completely disagree.

I've had my Gmail for so long, I literally would not be able to dump it. Records, logins, accounts etc., all tied to my Gmail.

My phone, government accounts, lawyers, medical and tax are all tied to that account. It's more than just sending a new email address for friends to contact you with.

On the other hand, YouTube is....social media? You don't have to watch videos on line. I think I've used my YouTube account 5 times in my life, and I'm not a social pariah.

To be honest, it's probably a generational thing. No one I know really uses YouTube, and they all have their life tied to their Gmail account.

Search is the easiest to replace. You can, like, replace it by googling superior alternatives like Brave, Kagi, DuckDuckGo, Searx etc

To people hesitating, the path is simple and safe:

Create your new email (I'd recommend your own domain but you can also use another provider)

Set up Gmail so that it redirects all mail into your new mailbox.

Start giving your new email and migrate little by little your accounts to the new email.

You will not lose emails sent to your Gmail but you won't use their UI anymore.

At some point, you will realize nothing but spam ends up on your Gmail and you can close it if you want.

Google Photos is the one i am having biggest problems replacing

Store i can store my images anywhere, but nowhere can I type in the search files "Italy" and see all the images I took in Italy, or "John" and see all the images I have of people called John. Or even just search for "car" and show all images of cars.

I get much more out of my images using that service than any other image storing option i have tried

You will also become a social outcast if peertube is the only app you use. You might not understand channels people mention in day to day talk from youtube or references.

We must be in different generations. The only time my peers ever mention YouTube is when they’re directly sharing a specific video. No one ever talks about following channels.

One look at my spam folder in gmail makes me realize why I wouldn’t leave. I’ve felt Google nailed spam detection.

Federation is when two or more distinct networks interact through a common protocol. Email systems are all part of the same store-and-forward model.

You can say that email is federated with newsgroups but email is not federated within itself. A system with multiple instances that use the same implementation is called distributed. Federation means hopping across networks of distributed systems with different implementations.

Example 1: people think that Lemmy is a federated system. On its own it's not. It's federated because it interacts with other systems (Mastodon, Kbin etc.) If the others didn't exist then Lemmy would simply be a distributed system, not federated.

Example 2: Bluesky is not federated even though it's distributed and technically capable of federation.

YouTube is probably the single website I spend most of my time on, but I only use Firefox. I have some 4 extensions to make it usable, not because google intentionally makes it worse, but because unmodded YouTube sucks. They're ublock origin, dearrow, yt enhancer and sponsorblock.

Nah, changing email address is the hardest of services. Gmail has been my main address for about 15 years. Every single online account I have uses it, and that's in the high hundreds. Maybe if you'd used your own domain with gmail when you started you could hop around some, but not so many people do that.

It's the hardest to replace.

There's literally no other service that has a web email client that's as nice and as feature rich

I need filters, multiple SMTP sending profiles, import from other IMAP accounts, easy account switching, delayed sending, labels. Nobody offers all those feature in a web client.

Maybe zoho mail is the only one that offers a similar interface

If you know an alternative please tell me because my Google one subscription is due to renewal next month and I really want to move away but I can't find an alternative.

And the Gmail webui isn't perfect too, mobile viewing sucks with an huge banner "why u no add this Google account to your android phone so we can track your actions better??" That's on top of the page that can't be dismissed.

And the "archive" button that doesn't actually move it in an archive folder but is more "hide this email forever and make it impossible to find it again"

You might not understand channels people mention in day to day talk from youtube or references.

Hahaha jesus nah, the only time I ever hear people mention streamers or youtubers is to go "Who the hell is THAT? they did WHAT to their underage fans?" And then I immediately stop caring about them.

The problem that I had by changing my email to another provider is that most websites wont allow other emails other than the big dogs: Gmail and outlook and its so fucking annoying.

Gmail's easiest to replace if you have your own domain. I moved mine a couple years ago with no issues at all.

There are still various ways to watch YT ad-free and tracking-free. (And you can pay the creators directly on Patreon or through another service, and watch the videos ad-free on Patron. I pay a little more on Patreon than I was paying for YT Premium, but not much more, and I'm happier the creators are getting bigger cut and Google is getting no cut.)

I use FF basically exclusively except for the rare time a site doesn't work with it. It was also an easy change. Google does degrade their stuff (whether or purpose or through ineptitude) but there are other options for the other main Google services, as well.

The only things I have left on there are photos, contacts, and calendars. Photos will probably be the next to go.

That depends on how many services you have tied to that email address that you would have to change.

just use a pop mail account on your own server.

that way you can connect it to gmail and get all your mail there or disconnect it and get it elsewhere and you never have to change emails with anyone else