> Being able to pay for _just_ email from a company that isn't also harvesting my mail contents for ad targeting and search relevance is honestly a huge relief to me.
GMail (consumer) stopped scanning your mail for ads personalization five years ago [1]. IIUC, the paid version already wasn't (never did?).
[1] https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in...
I appreciate that this is probably true, but ultimately I moved all my personal email from Gmail to Fastmail for a similar reason. It honestly feels good to pay someone for the service to improve the chances that our incentives are aligned. It's hard to believe my incentives will ever be aligned with Google when they are notorious for slurping up every ounce of user data they can find for the purposes of ad targeting.
Their track record [1][2][3] does not show a positive or improving trend, so when Google asks me to take them at their word that they are not doing something that would make them more money, I cannot reconcile that with their prior behavior.
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/time-make-amends-googl...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/24/apple-goo...
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/22/google_facebook_antit...