If Google wants to do so, they can do the same with YouTube.
There are other email providers out there, but there’s only really one service like YouTube.
EDIT: Also, there are a lot of documents out there in Google Docs. I mean, if they start requiring a Google account with personal information to view those, they control access to a lot of stuff. And while hosting documents (dunno about editable documents) probably isn’t as hard as hosting video, you can’t just yourself migrate out of that the way you can with email. Need all the people sticking information on Google Docs to also do so.
If Google wants to do so, they can do the same with YouTube.
There are other email providers out there, but there’s only really one service like YouTube.
EDIT: Also, there are a lot of documents out there in Google Docs. I mean, if they start requiring a Google account with personal information to view those, they control access to a lot of stuff. And while hosting documents (dunno about editable documents) probably isn’t as hard as hosting video, you can’t just yourself migrate out of that the way you can with email. Need all the people sticking information on Google Docs to also do so.