> Oddly, I suspect if Google provided no free accounts at all--if you had to give a credit card and pay $5 to sign up--nobody would be complaining about this.

That is like saying 'if the DMV didn't offer IDs to people, no one would complain about not being able to get an ID'.

The fact of the matter is that email is 'de facto' online ID, and gmail has positioned itself into this role. They are now a societal need, not a luxury. They need to be regulated.