I find the amount of attention that a single ordinary mail provider receives in this forum disturbing. On a forum for hackers and startup founders, I'd expect that people use and promote small providers instead of huge corporations.
being corporate != departure from quality.
its not really fair to say that the burden rests on hackers and startup founders to promote/use small providers. small providers also have a responsibility to innovate and compete to provide superior products. It is the responsibility of end users to choose the application that suits their needs best.
If small providers aren't competitive with gMail, then gMail will maintain its large marketshare and continue to receive attention from its users.
I'm running my own innovative, superior, competitive, streamlined combination of qmail+mutt, so forgive me if I find posts about free Gmail stickers slightly obtuse.