I’d pay $12/year for gmail. That would give Google the revenue they need to keep everything humming along. I’ve been living with free e-mail for almost 25+ years now, but a dollar a month would be easy to rationalize for the service.
Right now I'm the product and so I have no expectation of customer service. When I'm paying 1 dollar a month I'm holding someone liable if I lose access to my account.
And, legally, I can reasonably take Gmail to court for monetary loss and f I am a paying customer. 200k people going to small claims court for whatever will completely wipe out any profit that alphabet hopes to make of Gmail.
So, yeah, it's cheaper for Gmail to provide free accounts with no liability than to get caught up in mandatory customer protection laws.
I have no experience of actually using it