I dunno, I pay for extra storage on GMail (and the rest of Google's services) and I don't think it removes the ads. It's just extra storage.

There is such an alternative: hosted Exchange. ActiveSync is an almost ubiquitous protocol.

Add on the fact that it's currently usually businesses that use it, and I feel even safer that my data won't be fucked with or social networked (cough buzz) on a whim. Maybe on a little more, but probably not a whim :)

It's what I use and love.

I feel similarly. I started paying for extra gmail storage after reading a story of how one guy's gmail just ceased to be one day. I hope that somehow by paying, gmail has a small motivation to keep mine in existence. Probably wrong, but it makes me feel better.