Migration is non trivial - i.e. it is a lot of work. You're right, I'm not looking for perfection, but to just jump to something because it's marginally better than Google isn't worth it. I want the difference to be great enough for my time investment. So I think it's quite sensible to carefully consider where to move. Getting off of Google is indeed important, but if I'm in only a slightly better situation, that's hasty and a waste. I don't expect absolute privacy anywhere, but I am looking for "pretty damn good". Maybe if DDG offered email it'd fit that.
I take slight issue with "marginally better than Google". Any of the services mentioned here (Posteo, Fastmail, etc.) including Protonmail are _much_ more than "marginally" better when it comes to privacy.
The issue that you have with Protonmail seems to be that they enabled IP logging in response to a lawful government request. Google logs IP by default, scans your messages, etc. It baffles me that there is less outrage at that than this single case.
I agree, it's non-trivial and perhaps my comment came across in a negative light. But, I think people are overstating the implication of the issue at hand - especially when you compare Protonmail (and others) to the big providers such as Google and Microsoft.
>The issue that you have with Protonmail seems to be that they enabled IP logging in response to a lawful government request. Google logs IP by default, scans your messages, etc. It baffles me that there is less outrage at that than this single case.
So in case the government is out to get you, both options will lead to the same outcome: your IP address is revealed.
Migrating from Gmail to Fastmail is trivial. You literally log into your Gmail account from within the Fastmail interface, and it downloads/transfers all your mail. The only change that is unavoidable is a different e-mail address (unless you already use your own domain at Google).
You could literally change to Fastmail and cancel your Gmail account before tomorrow.
There are hundreds of excuses for not switching from Google or for staying on Facebook etc. But only one outcome: action.
I migrated from Gmail to Outlook.com a few years ago after I encountered a bug that I thought was serious but Google didn't. It wasn't that hard, but it did take some work over a period of time.
To start with, I forwarded all my Gmail to Outlook.com. As email came in and I read it, I would log into the site that sent it and change my email in there. As time went on, things slowly migrated out of Gmail. I told friends and family I was switching my email address but fortunately for me basically no human ever emails me. The few that do, I can receive the email at Gmail and send a response from Outlook so they get the update.
Now I'm about 99% migrated over, and the few stragglers that still send to Gmail make it to my new inbox anyway so I'm never missing anything.
