technically they are federated, not decentralized. Gmail is a centralized, federated node. Think like a federation of states where each state is its own centralized, independent unit.

the newer definition of "decentralization" is more akin to anarchy. Collectivism vs individualism.

Email is not "technically federated". It's de facto federated. You can run your own email server on your home computer.

Anything less centralized than email isn't going to be "Web3" because it's not going to be a web at all. For the purposes of the internet, there is no functional difference between federated and decentralized. Two strangers must have a way of contacting each other -- something like an IP address at a minimum. That's a centralization point right there.

In the case of the web, DNS is going to be the main way that things are centralized.

Blockchain is similarly federated -- it just has a way to make sure that each node has a mutually agreed upon state. That doesn't make it decentralized, it just makes it redundant and distributed.