Quick thought experiment: imagine waking up tomorrow and your Gmail account is just... gone. Locked. Some automated system flagged something, there's no human to call, and the recovery form keeps rejecting you.
Sounds dramatic? It happens more often than you'd think. Search "Google locked me out" on any forum and you'll find thousands of posts from people who lost years of email, photos, and — this is the part that should scare you — access to every account that used that email for password resets.
That thought experiment is basically the entire argument for owning your email domain. But it's not the whole story, so let's do this properly.
The uncomfortable truth about "free" email
Gmail isn't free. You pay with data, attention (ads), and — most importantly — control. Google owns the address, the inbox, and the rules. You're a tenant, and the landlord can change the locks whenever they want.
