I get the point of moving other services to places that are encrypted, private, secure, and cannot be reached by NSA, GCHQ, etc.

But... email?

It goes over the internet in plain text, has substantial meta-data, and even the contents are trivially small to store.

When people want to come off of G+, Facebook, etc... great, that makes some sense. If they want to stop using Chrome Sync, and to use Firefox, install add blockers, anti-trackers, change their hosts file, use VPNs, enable Tor, change DNS provider... great, that makes some sense.

Email makes a lot less sense though. It's effectively public and what security exists is about effective as your front door lock. It keeps out the average person that passes by and little more than that.

There is actually some argument to be had that if most of your contacts use Gmail that you should stay on Gmail as the email wouldn't route via the public internet.

I am sticking with Gmail, but am using a Google Apps for Domains account for it as that allows you to configure the domain to fully disable other Google and related services (G+, YouTube, advertising, Drive, etc). I then access Gmail via Chrome Incognito and live the rest of my internet life in Firefox.

Effectively Google for me, starts each day afresh, sand-boxed in a private browser session, and with no permission to do anything else.

The only other Google things I used they have already shuttered or have announced they're doing so. Effectively when this happens I am one of the n% who don't move to G+ and roll off of Google services.

I do wonder if we'll ever hear what % of users didn't go to Hangouts when they re-branded and closed Talk. What % of Latitude users will vanish when G+ gets whatever location sharing capability. Maybe it's negligible to Google, but it doesn't feel negligible when I speak to friends who used to use Google a lot more.