It’s only a passport to your internet because you haven’t bothered looking outside its borders.
Congratulations on being a better Internet user that the rest of the world! You are clearly very proud.
For the vast majority of people, their SaaS email (in most cases probably a Gmail account) is in fact their primary identity on the Internet, and that's not going to change because they wouldn't even know where to start looking for other options.
Before you say "that's their own fault for not knowing better", I would ask you: did you get your own medical degree so that you can handle all your own medical problems? What about a car? Did you build your own car? Do you have a law degree? Do you grow all your own food? Are you a licensed electrician? How about a food safety engineer? An architect? No? So you rely on established and proven products, systems and service providers for these things? Of course you do, because that's how society works.
Technology folks often forget that we happen to have specialized in a field that is now dominant and pervasive in everyday life, so we "get it" more than most, but that's not the case, sometimes not even an option, for most people..
Businesses should absolutely have the right to not let you use their services for any arbitrary reason! It's a free market! Sucks to be you!
</ sarcasm> ［Offer valid until the same thing happens to me, then I can scream and cry about it］
Did you build your own car? Are you asking us to compare building a car to using a gmail account. The comparison is did you build your own google mail provider. Very few have.
But most of us went to different dealships test drove different cars, looked up tech details and reviews. Reviewed recalls and decided for ourselves.
What kind of special degree do you feel you need to pick a different email provider?
And most people don't uses a sass. I would expect a slightly more tech enabled person to be using a sass (not too many grandmothers or average internet need a sass). Can those people figure out how to signed up without google if they want to? I would hope so. If your sass doesn't offer any other way to sign up it won't be around for too long anyhow.
If you are going to put everything under your google services for your saas pay a few dollars and get a business account if it's important to your business.
In which case they are in luck. There are a multitude of email-providers worldwide, and email is 100% transferable.
Many people for instance use Office 365. A similar SaaS, not Google, allowing you to digitally separate who you are from what you do.
> did you get your own medical degree so that you can handle all your own medical problems?
No. Absolutely not.
Nor did I once sign up for a medical check, pledging that I would for the rest of my life use this one medical facility only.
Do you know anyone who has ever done so? Ofcourse not, because that makes no sense.
And it should similarly make no sense to make such a move in the digital world, maybe there even less.
If you separate email (identity) from what you do (like using Google services), the worst Google can do is ban your ability to do business with Google, not your ability to do business at all.
As a business, why would anyone be stupid enough to take the risk and let Google have that ability?
Edit: As for being the most HN comment ever, how goes conflating email for Gmail and seemingly being unaware of there being other email-providers than Google? I mean, really?
Really? You think the average person can navigate changing all the services they signed up for with a Google account they've lost access to, and update it to a new account at a new provider?
Having helped a few non-technical but still very smart people do this over the years, I can tell you that for most people this would be way more daunting and painful than you believe.
> If you separate email (identity) from what you do (like using Google services), the worst Google can do is ban your ability to do business with Google, not your ability to do business at all.
You say this so casually, and that's my whole point. Most people wouldn't understand this distinction or even know where to start to actually do this.
You rely on your technical knowledge without even realizing it, to even understand the need or option to do this. Again, most people do not have this level of technical acumen. These are unknown unknowns for them.
I chose cars, health care, food and housing in my examples because they are day-to-day things for everyone that we all take for granted and don't deeply understand, and rely on experts to handle for us, but can't really live without. That's the Internet for most people.
You missed the point by splitting hairs and nit-picking the comparisons.
> As for being the most HN comment ever, how goes conflating email for Gmail and seemingly being unaware of there being other email-providers than Google? I mean, really?
This is now the second-most HN comment ever. ;-)