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Comment by morninglight | Hacker News Reader

This is the most reasoned and constructive response that this event has produced. I hope your suggestion gets some political/legal traction.

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Poppycock, it’s just communism with extra steps. Google’s email server is not your email server just because you’ve come to depend on it. If you want your own server, build your own server.

How far does that argument go? "$ELECTRICITY_COMPANY's power is not your power just because you've come to depend on it. If you want your own electricity, build your own infrastructure".

Granted, most people here on HN would be able to deploy their own, but you can't ask that of the average citizen who just needs email.

I would hazard a guess that nobody on this forum has an alternate electric company they can go to. But there's dozens of search engines, and thousands of email providers that users can choose from, all competing for your business.

Again, you know that, I know that, will your average non-techie person know that? This also isn't only about email. Their entire data was on the account.

It took me 3 minutes to sign up on Protonmail.

https://www.google.com/search?q=email+provider+service hundreds of options from the same page.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket, "everybody" knows that. It doesn't just apply to computers - non-techies are familiar with the concept too. It's common sense.

Err what? Non-technical people can have a hard time telling the difference between email and Gmail. They don't understand the difference of photos stored on their smartphone vs in the cloud.

I’m confused. Is this another USism that you can’t choose a power supplier?

Some states Americans can change the generation company, but last mile company can't be changed. (the power lines either underground or on a pole). This is managed by whatever company (or sometimes rarely the municipality) operates in that region.

There's a long way from the physical infrastructure of power lines to somebody's website.

Google makes this unnecessarily difficult for most people by preventing delivery to their users unless you jump through the right hoops.

Sounds like they’re not very good at email!

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