Plus, it lit a fire under me to rely on Google services less and less. I had a second Google One account that I stopped paying for as well, cause f them.
And it is not as easy as just changing my login email everywhere.
1. Some system (such as government ones) make it very, very difficult to change, not even possible on some
2. How do I make sure I'm not forgetting some random site I don't frequently use
3. What about everyone's contacts where they have me saved with my @gmail account, I can't update their addressbooks
At this point I think the only think I do is pray for my gmail account not being blocked.
I even recently did the switch from one mail provider to another while keeping my email address, since I took the advice of people years ago to choose a provider who supports custom domains and use them. Although I spent a fair bit of time researching, the process itself took about 2-3 hours. When people say it’s easy to switch between providers when you own the domain, they mean it.
It’s not an easy task at all, but you don’t have to do it in one hit. Just take your time - in the meantime you hope that your Google account doesn’t get axed, but even if it does you’re in a better position than if you stayed.
On forgetting a random site: use a password manager; then, you have an effective memory of all the services you use as well as their logins. This is something you should do whether you use Gmail or not. (This might be a bit redundant if you use Google to log in everywhere at the moment, but you’ll thank yourself later if you start this now.)
I mean, this is really what prevents me from eliminating the free email providers from my life, not that I can't afford paid email.
Whether or not it's overly paranoid, it's a pretty general pattern that when you venture off the beaten trail, you have more uncommon problems.